The Latter Days
by Ananke Adrasteia
Summary: The Chronoplast, as always, had delivered me in time. This was the wasted landscape which I had left behind in the search for my and Raziel’s destiny: Nosgoth in its fall. And I have arrived none too soon: the Hylden had invaded the land...
1. Prologue: A Bond Restored

**The Latter Days**

**Prologue**

**A Bond Restored**

_The bloodlust was upon me no more. The sacrifice that Raziel, my onetime Lieutenant and my only ally in the quest against the dark powers that controlled Nosgoth's fate, chose out of the free will that he alone in the realm possessed – the choice to comply with his fate, and enter the blade of the Soul Reaver, the weapon I now bore, the eternal prison fashioned for him by our vampire ancestors – this sacrifice purified me; and in my purity, I lost the gift that, of all those bestowed by my vampiric form, I had once treasured the most. The blood that flowed in the veins of living beasts would upon entering mine nourish me no more._

_I did not mourn the loss; for in its place, I was granted a new gift, a new source of sustenance._

_This, I discovered upon my departure from the Citadel of the Ancients. In that place, I at last faced and fought the abomination that dwelt there, the false god that had previously repeatedly attempted to cheat me of my destiny – but, ever until the time of my healing, had remained hidden from my eyes. I left the scene of our confrontation wounded, yet victorious – and soon afterwards, my wounds closed and my strength returned._

_The Pillar of Balance provided for its own._

_The Pillars, raised aeons ago by the same vampires who had forged the Soul Reaver, had been intended to hold off their ancient enemies, the Hylden, from Nosgoth. That barrier had not proven infallible – the Hylden eventually broke out of the demon dimension to which they had been bound. Led by a powerful sorcerer, they brought the Pillars down, having first poisoned the minds of the Circle of Guardians that had been called to watch over them. I had been one of those Nine; and like all others, I too had fallen to the taint._

_Now, however, I was healed, and the Pillars and I were joined again by a symbiotic bond. This was the source of my newfound strength – for even shattered as they were, the Pillars would nourish me, as they had done for their Guardians of old, when the Circle had not yet been broken. Weakness and poison had only recently settled in the land, and Nosgoth had not yet lost its vitality._

_However, my next battle was to be fought many years into the future, when all the time-streams that had parted and looped before were joined again; in the old and dying land that Nosgoth would become in the millennia that I would rule it with the aid of Raziel and my other Lieutenants; a land where the vampires that would have once been the children of my children would have turned into mindless beasts; where the Pillars would be almost devoid of their powers._

_There, in that land of corruption and decay, the Scion of Balance was awaited; and I would not be found lacking in my duties._

_The latter days of Nosgoth were finally to arrive._

* * *

**Disclaimer** – This is a piece of fan fiction. The fan its author understands that nothing in the _Legacy of Kain_ series belongs to her, and does not intend to derive any pecuniary profit from the story.

Several ideas in this story have been contributed by **Shadowjewel**. I owe her my gratitude; her and my reviewers... Please read, leave your review - but above all:

Enjoy the latter days of Nosgoth!


	2. Return to a Dying World

**Chapter 1**

**Return to a Dying World**

The Chronoplast was an underground complex of both natural and artificial caves; its purpose, like that of the other Time-Streaming devices and chambers once scattered across all Nosgoth, was to allow a soul brave – or foolish – enough to attempt it, the passage through the stream of Time itself. Of all such contraptions, however, the Chronoplast was the most powerful; the only one powerful enough to possibly carry its passenger through as much as millennia – and millennia were separating him from his destined period.

He emerged from the exit of the underground labyrinth, unsure of what exactly the age to which he had been brought was – whether days, years, decades or centuries separated him from the moment when he had left this Nosgoth in the search for his and Raziel's destiny; for in the dying land, even keeping the record of time was no simple matter – days flowed into nights, nights into days, the former much alike the other under the unchanging sky. For certain, though, he came none too soon; there were Hylden in Nosgoth.

From his vantage point, he could easily make out the skeletal, insect shapes of three of them moving towards the caves from the direction of the former Dumahim abode. He waited until they approached, and then showed himself.

"Look! What is that?" one of the Hylden cried. Its voice sounded peculiar, raspy: as though it were not quite accustomed to speaking.

"One of _them_," answered the second, eyeing him up and down.

The third one moved, startled. "Them? Aren't they all dead already?"

He decided to cut the conversation short, however amusing it might be. "Apparently not."

He attacked just the first Hylden uttered something that sounded suspiciously like "It talks!" With a powerful telekinetic blast, he hurled one of the enemies into a wall, and another into a bonfire burning nearby, where the creature quickly caught on fire; the third one stood his ground, but was soon cut in half with a single, barely perceptible stroke of the Reaver, whose eyes glowed briefly as it devoured the soul. Then, he came up to the third Hylden, still dazed from the impact upon the wall, and severed the warrior's head.

"All too easy," he laughed as he turned around and impaled on the Reaver the still-burning Hylden who had tried to sneak on him from the behind.

Several telekinetic bolts fired in rapid succession at the entrance of the cavern caused it to cave in, preventing, or at least delaying, future unwanted intrusions from the past; one more was enough to destroy the sundial mechanism that opened the gates. It was now the time to consider his next steps –

Sudden fatigue overwhelmed him, utterly disproportionate to the minor skirmish he had just fought; and especially one in which he had suffered no wound. He knew what its source was – he _had_ anticipated this effect, after all; even so, he had terribly, if not fatally, underestimated its _scale_ –

-------

_The corruption introduced into the Pillars through the Hylden machinations had turned them against the very land they had been conceived to guard. No longer symbionts of the land, but warped into parasites by the Circle's madness, they seeped decay into and stole energy out of Nosgoth._

_I had perhaps known this all before, in the time when I had ruled as Emperor of the realm: Fate had assigned me a prominent role in sealing the Pillar's doom. But only now could I truly grasp the magnitude of damage: previously corrupt, and thus not subject to the Pillars' hunger, I now acutely felt through our symbiotic bond how the Pillars set out to destroy their own destroyer: how the parasite set out to feed on the last source of pure energy in the waste land._

-------

The pull of the Pillars' hunger was nearly unbearable; yet bear it he must if he were to reach the Pillars themselves. He willed himself to stand up, to move, to fight the terrible fatigue –

He only began to move when, from the corner of his eye, he saw something glitter: between the bonfire and the rock behind it, a layer of cerulean haze was hovering about a metre above the ground. Roughly spherical and scarcely moving, seen from above it would resemble somewhat the surface of a pool of water. He instantly recognised this for what it was –

-------

_These eldritch pools of energy had only started to show in Nosgoth shortly before my departure. Torn away from the universal flow of power by the malfunctioning Pillar of Energy, trapped in places scattered about the realm, these stagnant pools were apparent symptoms of the land's corruption._

_All my instincts rebelled against such scavenged fare: yet, the choice in this matter was not mine._

-------

Unhesitatingly, he approached the pool; the dead energy rose to meet him, then gathered around him, enveloped him from the outside; at last, it filled him from within; and there, it stayed. It tasted of death, corruption and decay – repulsive, as repulsive as the blood taken from a long-dead corpse. But whatever its flavour, the energy did nourish him; stronger for the moment, he turned south.

He dared not teleport himself to the Sanctuary, or fly as he was wont to, as a flock of bats: he was weak, and the margin of error was simply too large – he did not know what changes had occurred in the land in his absence. Instead, he followed on foot the snow-covered path that would take him to what had once been the Ash Village of the Dumahim Clan.

On his way, he encountered another patrol of Hylden scouts. The enemies were rather easy to dispatch – certainly, far easier than when he had fought them in Meridian in that ancient age, before the dawn of the Empire – but the erratic pools of energy that he now and again found could cure only ever so many of his wounds –

The Village was an unhappy surprise. Though no longer completely immured – an opening had been forced through the wall that had previously separated the abode from the path – it was clear that he would not be a welcome guest there. A shimmering green dome of Glyph energy – a defensive measure constructed specifically against vampires – covered the place completely; clearly, an important enough Hylden encampment must have been located within.

He found that he could not cross the Ward Shield, or even come close to it; apparently, he still shared the vampire weakness to the Glyph energy. Nor did he really wish to enter the Village, at the moment: his path led now elsewhere, he must conquer the Pillars lest he perish to their hunger. He left behind the bodies of the unfortunate Hylden that had been posted as guards outside the gate, and, vowing to return to the Village in some unspecified future, continued down the path which led to the Abyss.

-------

_The swirling vortex of the Abyss had claimed countless lives of traitors who had dared defy my will as the Emperor of Nosgoth. Its last victim had been Raziel; though for him, the place had become as much as a beginning as it had been an end._

_The familiar landmark greeted me as though I were an old friend returning from an overlong journey. I would greet it in return, if I could but stop wondering – what was the false god that Raziel had encountered lurking in its depths? And how could one destroy a creature which claimed to be beyond time or space?_

-------

He leapt to the rocky outcropping which overhung the whirlpool; crossing the wooden bridge which still connected the ledge with the terra firma, he followed the serpentine path through the grey canyons which would eventually take him to the Pillars.

-------

_I anticipated resistance at the Pillars; it was a key strategic point, and the Hylden would not leave it unguarded._

_Even so, little was I prepared for the scene I witnessed in the Sanctuary of the Clans._

-------

The Sanctuary of the Clans lay in ruin. Either through some natural calamity, or by some power's command, the once-magnificent building had been torn down into rubble. Heaps of stones and bricks were lying throughout the spacious clearing; here and there, the remainders of a wall or a support post were still standing. The two pools of water which had once greeted the vampires seeking audience with their Lord, reminding them of their impotence in the face of the greatest weakness of their kindred, were now but two shallow pits of mud and dirt; in some places, Nosgoth's black plants had already taken root amongst the masonry.

There was not a living soul in sight: but there were plenty of corpses – the whole ground was littered with Hylden bodies. Most of the cadavers were horribly mutilated; some were in outright indiscernible pieces – mere lumps of bone, metal and cloth, fused together into a horrid mass. Just as he had thought, the Hylden must have attempted to gain control over this critical spot; but it was clear that they had failed, repelled by some even more powerful force.

But this was not yet all: completing this picture of decay and death, a heavy, unmoving dark blue mist of stagnant energy lingered all about the place, covering it like a shroud would cover a corpse. The broken Pillars emerged from this cerulean haze in the distance; approaching from the north as he was, he was now behind them. Their appearance was unchanged from what he remembered them to be in this era; as he came closer, he saw that his throne was similarly untouched by time: it was still clutching the Pillar of Balance in its stony grasp.

Slowly, warily, agonisingly aware again of the merciless, implacable hunger of the Pillars: the quintessential parasite, they were utterly indifferent to the fact that _his_ fall would soon spell _their_ doom – he stepped on the dais and entered between the shattered columns; all the while looking for the familiar figure –

There she was.

"_Ariel_. Still here, I see."

The ghost of the former Balance Guardian was hovering somewhat to the front, turned away from him; at the sound of his voice, a short, sudden spasm rippled through her ethereal body. Then, Ariel slowly turned to face him: first, only her head (and, for a moment, as always, she looked almost beautiful to him as he saw only the human half of her face – but, as always, that impression quickly faded when the part of her face that was the naked skull came into view) and then, her whole body –

"Through no fault of mine, as you well know, Kain," she said coolly.

"All _too_ well," he replied in a similar tone. His relationship with the ghost had never been easy, as neither Ariel nor he were particularly willing to forgive the past betrayals. It galled him that he had to ask her now for information... a_gain_: as though he were reduced again to that simpering fledgling he had once been. "You have reminded me of that often enough. Tell me," he added forcefully, "what happened here?"

But the ghost, secure in her conviction that he could not touch her, would not be cowered; would not give him the straight and simple answer he demanded. "Ever the helpless spectator," she ululated, "I cannot abandon these Pillars to which I am bound not by _my_ own accord, but by _your_ perfidy, Kain; yet you – _you_, who have _willingly_ pledged yourself to guard it – _can_; and you _have_." Her tone altered rapidly; she almost spat out the last word.

As a fledgling, he had once or twice attempted to test the Soul Reaver's powers on Ariel; to check whether the ghost was as secure against him as she presumed – only to discover, to his dismay, that, indeed, she _was_. Ariel was to remain a constant of his existence; her hatred for him only deepened across the millennia of their cohabitation.

And, apparently, like the Abyss, she had not changed much in his absence.

Edging towards the Pillar of Balance, where the blue haze of the stagnant energy was the densest (the mist rose to meet him; and though it felt no better than it had before, immediately he felt stronger); gathering the last of his patience – he answered:

"I had my reasons for leaving, Ariel."

"Perhaps," the ghost answered contemptuously. "But the last Guardian has abandoned his post, and _they_ have returned. The Unspoken."

Kain sneered, "One would think, Ariel, that after millennia of existence as a ghost, you would finally have the courage to call them by their true name: _Hylden_."

The ghost was evidently incensed by the ridicule. "It is no mere cowardice that rules me, Kain: it was _decreed_ – by _your_ vampiric ancestors – that the name, and its carriers, forever be forgotten."

"In that case, they were fools to put ignorance over knowledge; yet I see no dissent in that matter on _your_ part, _human_. However –" he continued without giving Ariel a chance to speak – "the Hylden's obscurity clearly was not enough to win _this_ battle for them. Who defeated them?"

There was a note of bitter triumph in Ariel's voice as she replied, "If you linger in these ruins, you are sure to encounter _them_. I will say no more."

The ghost fell silent, and for a short time he was afraid that she would escape him into whatever safe harbour she retreated when at times she could no longer bear his presence. But the ghost did not fade from his view; instead, she appeared to –

For all it looked like, she appeared to _listen_ to something – something _he_ could not hear –

And then, belying her previous words, Ariel suddenly spoke out, clearly no less astonished than he was. "Kain, I – I am called."

"_Called_?" That was all he managed to say: for at this moment, Ariel began to change: the death mask she wore for half of her face started to rapidly fill out with flesh and skin until her face was one and whole (and, as he saw her that way for the first time, he was finally free to admit that in life, Ariel must have been beautiful); the tattered rags the ghost wore mended themselves –

And suddenly, instead of the impotent, embittered, half-crazed spectre he had known for millennia, he was facing a figure of power, a figure he had long thought gone and forgotten; a figure much like the Ariel who had first greeted a fledgling vampire on a quest to exact his revenge on a world – only _more_ so: a puissant Guardian of Balance. "_Yes_," she said, and he could hear that even her voice was much different now; much stronger – "Raziel calls for the Guardians' reunion; I must leave. And perchance I will be free at last; perchance my long vigil is over –"

"And if I find peace, Kain," she added, even as he saw her fade into nothingness, "then may you fare well in your quest... May you find your peace as well."

"Ariel?" he called out in disbelief; but he was now alone in the cerulean haze.

-------

_Leaving behind but her uncertain benediction, Ariel departed to seek her deliverance at Raziel's hands. Apparently, I was to face the Pillars' mute fury alone._

_Unchanging in the greyness that epitomised their corruption the Pillars stood, heedless of any suppliance I would send their way; and I began to wonder if I had come too late; if the Pillars of these age were beyond redemption –_

_And it was then: as I faced the Pillars without and my doubts within – that I suddenly felt a faint sensation at the edge of my awareness, an inexplicable urge; not unlike the one that had called me to the Spirit Forge for the reunion of the Guardians of Balance._

_And I knew what had to be done: Ariel's was not to be the only cage which need shatter that day._

-------

The throne under the Pillar of Balance appeared sturdy; indeed, it must have been such for it to withstand so well the test of time – more than a millennium had passed since its construction; for more than a millennium had he ruled from it with iron fist over vampires and humans alike. Even so, he held little sentiment for this symbol of his fallen Empire; and when he gathered the remnants of his powers, the durability of stone proved insubstantial compared to the might of his wrath; as it always had.

And thus, the cage in which by his own hand he had imprisoned the Pillars was by his own hand shattered; and the healing of the land could begin.

The Pillar of Balance, the axis of the Nine, was returned to Nosgoth; straight, white and pristine as he remembered it from eras long past, it materialised from the very air before him, from the heavy blue mist around him – a column of marble with no beginning, nor end; a vision of his mind's eye; yet a vision once real, and now real again. And suddenly, he half-perceived, half-intuited an unspoken promise: he was now safe: corrupt as the other Pillars might be, he was now safe from them and from their hunger –

But even as the Pillar of Balance rose, he felt the odd pull again. This time, its source was the leftmost Pillar, that of Mind. He approached; all it took this time was, apparently, a touch –

-------

_The Pillars of Mind and Dimension were restored; the Pillar of Balance bound their powers to me. In my veins, the conjoined forces united and became one –_

_And, as I gained command of Air, I was transformed._

-------

There was a –

A Change – a Change which in quality was perhaps not unlike those through which he had gone all throughout his existence; especially when he had been yet young, yet a fledgling, and his vampiric body Changed often; but in quantity – in quantity this was a Change multiplied thousandfold. His body shivered under the power which was now passing through it; the Change warped it, twisted it to its tastes – perhaps, as before in Ariel's case, filling some lacuna in his self; though for him, unlike her, it was a lacuna whereof he had not been previously aware –

_Wings._

The power deserted him, and he was in command of himself again; and he felt them: wings, vampire rather than Hylden in appearance; black and feathered, stretching further than his height was –

But he would not have the time to inspect them in detail: for at that moment, a massive earthquake rippled through the ground below him; and then, the demons appeared.

They materialised out of thin air all around him: fiends of various shapes, colours and powers; some fiery red, others toxic green or lightning blue; these, then, were the agents of the Hylden's demise –

He had first fought demons in Avernus when he had been but a fledgling; and last, in the Vampire Citadel in the epoch he had just departed. In comparison with the other foes he had encountered – especially the puny humans of the Sarafan order; he smiled at _that_ remembrance – they were fairly difficult to kill. Of course, that did not mean much in the usual circumstances; unfortunately, the circumstances were uncomfortably far from usual. Though with the restoration of the three Pillars he no longer faced the threat of exhaustion – indeed, the Pillars would help him regenerate his health, even if they would do so distressingly slowly – he was still much weakened; and here he faced not one or two of the beasts, but a whole horde of them –

Two demons approached first, a green one from his left, a blue one to his right. He unsheathed the Reaver, keeping it in front of him to be able to both attack and defend himself. The monster on the left struck first; he deftly sidestepped its blow, and when the giant limbs were already committed to the strike, he severed them with a quick vertical slash. He then moved forward and cut the creature horizontally in twain; barely in time to dodge a lightning projectile thrown by the other demon. Spinning around rapidly, he cut diagonally, shoulder-to-waist, through the cobalt-blue fiend –

He didn't finish the move – though he did not really need to: the creature was already dead; but at this moment he felt fire searing into his flesh: another fiery demon, standing right behind the now-falling blue one. To avoid the creature's deadly breath, he sprang into air, forcefully tearing the Reaver from the carcass –

It took all two of his wings' strokes to take him far above the mass of the hideous, fiendish bodies now swarming on the ground. From the above, he fired several telekinetic projectiles in succession; the two demons closest to him were thrown back by the unseen force; and _then_ –

-------

The Reaver captured another demon's soul – he did not know how many of them he had killed; he had stopped counting them long before. But his enemies did not decrease in number – every time he killed one fiend, another one arrived to replace the fallen. And he was bleeding profusely from several wounds; the Pillars evidently did not regenerate his strengths quickly enough to instantly heal the injuries–

Loath as he was to admit defeat, he would have to temporarily concede the battlefield. He took to air again, leaving behind a gift to his enemy – several effigies made of nothing but thin air and diaphanous mist, yet completely like him in appearance and action. The decoys – the product of the powers of Mind – occupied his enemies' attention whilst he departed safely, heading for the northwest.

-------

_At whatever power's behest they acted, it was clear that these demonic guardians aimed to destroy all, Hylden or vampire, who dared enter the fallen Sanctuary. Whoever controlled them clearly had his own plans for this place._

_Yet what these plans were, I knew not and would not guess; I knew far too little of this world to which I had come. And now that I was no longer in danger from the Pillars, the time had arrived for me to learn more._

_I knew where to begin my hunt for information: to the north, behind the high walls of the human Citadel._


	3. Collateral Damage

**Chapter 2**

**Collateral Damage**

At the dawn of the Empire, when the land had been divided between the Clans, at the command of the Lords of Nosgoth a magnificent road, paved with granite and sandstone, had been built by human slaves. The Imperial Road led from the Sanctuary of the Clans northwest, parallel to the shores of the Lake of the Dead; then, it split; the western path led to what previously had been Vasserbunde, and now the land of the Melchiahim; the eastern one led to the frigid Ash Village; and thereafter, to the lands of the Turelim Clan. Southwards and eastwards, the Road stretched from the Sanctuary to the once-fertile grounds on the shores of the Great South Lake where the Zephonim lived.

The road from the Zephonim lands north to the territories of Turel had never been constructed. Not for want of time or resources, or even appropriate land – though the ground of the lands to the east of the Lake of the Dead, little more than swamps and quagmires, was not suited to carry the weight of the heavy granite; but at the God-Emperor's own behest; for that was his own domain, and Avernus, his usual refuge for the times when he found the insubstantial bickering between the Clans too tedious to bear.

After Raziel's execution; after the Clans had scattered to the corners of Nosgoth, their leaders fearful of following their senior in his horrible death when their own time to evolve had come; after each Clan in turn had forsworn its loyalty to their ultimate Lord, electing to follow its own path to corruption, and all contact between the Clans had ceased – then, the Imperial Road fell into disuse; there was no one to maintain it, and over the centuries that were to pass, it would become a ruin, as degenerate as the rest of the Empire in its fall. Earthquakes soon shattered the massive pavestones; plants grew freely in the gaps between them, where previously not even the blade of a knife could enter; landslides closed off large parts of the road, and rendered others nearly impossible to traverse for all the rubble accumulated; finally, the renegade humans who had raised their Citadel in the northwest of the realm barricaded the way with stone, brick, and water in an effort to bar the vampires in the south and the east from trespassing into the territory they soon came to consider their own.

Now, however, the way north was open again.

--------

_The old way north had been cleared, undoubtedly for the convenience of the Hylden troops in their march to conquer all of Nosgoth; apparently, it had served equally well for the hasty retreat of the fortunate few who had survived the defeat of their legions at the Pillars._

--------

He stopped for a moment, eyeing the telltale traces of a recent flight scattered before his eyes – pieces of equipment, too heavy to carry when speed had been of importance; puddles of blood from the wounds that no one had found the time to dress; the body of a soldier who could continue to run no more, and had been left behind by his comrades, who had not even spared a moment to administer to him the blow of mercy. It was then that he heard the voices; someone was approaching. He flew up to a rocky outcropping which jutted out above the path; from there, unseen to those below him, he listened to their conversation.

"Almost there."

"I'm not sure if I want to know what waits at the end. Did you see how scared the survivors were?"

"Demons breaking loose… And now – this. The Pillars, risen again!"

The three scouts had already passed him; for a moment, he considered letting the Hylden go, if only to see their faces when the cowards confronted the mammoth demons; in any case, there was no danger that they would discover anything at the Pillars. In the end, however, he remained true to the creed he had set for himself millennia ago: no enemy would escape his hands unharmed. _Ever_.

He did not fly down to meet his foes; instead, through the Reaver he created a powerful updraft that brought them up to his level, and then jumped in between the astounded creatures. The Hylden were all dead before their bodies met the ground again.

--------

_Given how little time had passed since I had left the ruins of the Sanctuary of the Clans, the encampment from which these Hylden spies hailed must lay somewhere equally close. The matter invited further investigation; the potential gains of infiltrating a Hylden compound far outweighed the elusive benefits which I hoped to reap from my journey to the human settlement._

--------

He followed the road north, through the canyons, the caves, and the tunnels burrowed by the slaves in the times now long past; at last, as he was about to leave the last cave into an open clearing, he found the tunnel mouth closed off by a Ward Gate; another gate, of wrought steel, was behind it. Faced with the green shimmer of the Glyph energy, he was forced to draw back again –

--------

_Beyond these closed gates must have lain the Hylden compound. Apparently, my enemies' hold over this part of Nosgoth was still insecure; no doubt, the demon rebellion, still fresh in the memory of the scouts whom I had just encountered, accounted for this caution._

--------

For a moment, he considered retracing his steps back to the other entrance of the cave, and then flying over the barred door; in the end, however, he opted to take a different path.

He did go back, but only several steps – only until he arrived by a heap of stones, all amassed in one corner of the cave. He shot a telekinetic projectile at the pile; then another. The stones fell down, revealing a gap; an entrance. One far too small an opening for him, in his current state; indeed, one too small for the majority of bipedal beings, unless one were willing to crawl. But unlike the majority of bipedal beings, _he_ was not bound to his current shape.

He concentrated; his form changed, distorted; and a moment later, a large grey wolf was running down the dark path which first led deep underground, and then was nearly level. Here, the ground of the passage was littered with bones; they crunched under the wolf's paws.

Finally, he found himself at the bottom of a deep, vertical well, just as narrow in radius in circumference as previously the passage was; but at least he could stand in this place. He shifted back to his usual form –

There would be a metal grate at the top, slightly loose, he knew; and one of the walls – or perhaps all – would have just enough purchase for him to climb…

He emerged precisely where he had expected: in one of the cages in the dungeon of the former abode of the Razielim Clan. He smiled grimly to himself as he passed as mist through the bars of the cage: Raziel's trap, faux way of escape for his prisoners had delivered him unerringly into his castle – where, as he suspected, the Hylden corps now resided.

--------

His assumption was proven correct soon after he had left the dungeon. As he walked down the corridors of the stronghold, once richly adorned in opulent red and gilt with gold; now but a shadow of their former glory – while the once luxurious tapestries on the walls were now oft but tatters, many a stone ornament was broken into pieces – he at times came across the enemy warriors, ambling about in twos or threes, conversing on a multitude of meaningless topics. These, he quickly dispatched, before they had the time to voice an alarm; captives such as these – mere soldiers, who more probably than not knew but little of their masters' plans – would be of little use to him; the better use he found for them was as fodder for his blade, practice material on which to hone his fencing skills. (The wings had shifted his centre of gravity, and he found it oddly irksome to have to familiarise with fighting in this Changed body after millennia of perfecting his coordination; still, it would not do to lose balance in a major confrontation.) It was the commander of this post for whom he was searching; and he had strong suspicions where he would find him.

--------

_Though I had not seen the inside of this edifice for centuries, I knew it well. In these very halls, another gruesome act of Nosgoth's history had once been played – and, regardless of the passage of time, all the marks were still here, visible to the eye of the one who had once witnessed it all._

_Here, in the erstwhile abode of Raziel's clan, a fratricidal bloodbath had once taken place as vampires fought vampires; the children of Raziel fought the children of my other Lieutenants. The first, loyal to their master with a constancy that transcended his death, and would last till their own end; the others, equally loyal to my own command; all caught in an inescapable web of preordained fates, forced to clash for no other reason than that of the bloody sacrifice which history demanded. For as I had bidden Raziel to his death, it was clear to all that his Clan should follow; that the other Clans should be its executioners; and I, again the one to give the order. And that order, I did give; for even I was then a pawn in another's game, and forced to comply with history's commands._

--------

"Their outer perimeter has been breached, yet you dare tell me I am ordered to remain here!"

"My Lady, the Pillars –"

As he suspected, he found the Hylden whom he sought in what had once been Raziel's war room. The commander was a gruesome creature – he had only seen one so warped when he had faced the true form of the Hylden general; the honorific he had just heard was veritably the only clue he had that she was a female of the species. Surrounded by her aides-de-camp, she appeared to be in the middle of a heated discussion with what appeared to be a messenger from another captain.

As he kicked the heavy door in, however, all differences in opinion seemed at once forgotten as everyone turned to see who the intruder was. For the shortest of moments, everything was silent, as he claimed the complete attention of everyone in the room; eventually, the leader spoke in disbelief.

"A vampire? Here?" The Glyphs on her armour glowed with bright poisonous green. It was all she managed to say; for in this moment, the fight started.

Chaos soon reigned; magic was unleashed copiously on both sides. He used his powers of Dimension to teleport himself around the room to strike at several of his enemies before they prepared for him; the Hylden captain unleashed a volley of powerful Glyph-magic spells, which burned the skin of the vampire lord as fire and water. One of the commander's aides had managed to escape and returned with reinforcements; soon, a steady barrage of Hylden warriors poured through the wide opening left by the destroyed door. These common grunts would not have lasted long against him, if at this point the Hylden captain had not cast another spell –

His enemies appeared to gain speed, moving swiftly, on par with his own pace; suddenly, he found himself defending from blows from all directions rather than dealing them out. The sorceress must have manipulated time itself, hasting his foes – or perhaps slowing him; to compensate, he spelled the creation of several of his Mind effigies. This proved an unexpectedly effective strategy; the projections absorbed the next torrent of the captain's toxic projectiles. Seeing this, he spelled the creation of a few more; unfortunately, at this moment his was sorely reminded of his detrimental link with the Pillars – this had been the last spell he would be able to cast in some time.

As soon as he saw that that the sorceress' spell ended, and that the spell-warped time reverted to its natural pace, he leapt over the heads of the soldiers in the direction of the captain. Once in the air, however, he saw that she had thrown a telekinetic projectile straight at him; he tried to dodge it, turning briefly into mist, but it still singed his right wing. He leapt again, and this time did manage to land close enough to her to hit her with the Reaver; but the Glyph shield she had apparently cast in the meantime stopped the blow. Waiting for the moment in which the commander would no longer be able to maintain her shield, he started to wade through the waves of soldiers again; whilst he fought them, the sorceress captain slowed his time again – and then again; periodically, she sent towards him waves of spells and projectiles, which, little by little, he was once more mastering to dodge.

The end of the annoyingly prolonged fight, when it came, was almost a disappointment – the captain was clearly a sorceress, and no fighter; once her magic powers ran out, with her soldiers all dead, she found herself helpless. At his mercy, one would say, had it existed in the first place.

Holding the Hylden at swordpoint, he said, "After I defeated the architect of your breed's previous futile invasion on my land, I made him a vow –"

She interrupted him, sudden recognition, and then fear, evident in both her voice and eyes, "And you have kept it. You _were_ waiting for us. Maat'ash'Eirene was right –"

Even he did not have a chance to move; mesmerised, he could but watch as she threw herself on the blade of the sword; the Reaver screamed and devoured her soul.

--------

_Through her death, the Hylden captain had deprived me of any potentially valuable information which she might have possessed – save for that one name: Maat'ash'Eirene. Who was it, who had known in such detail what had transpired during the confrontation between the Sarafan Lord and me at the entrance to the Hylden Gate, millennia ago? I knew not; but I would find out._

--------

Unceremoniously, he threw the carcass off the blade; afterwards, he wiped the crimson flower of blood off of it with a piece of cloth he had torn off the remains of a nearby curtain. He then stepped up to the window through which dim light entered, illuminating the chamber; and in it, the fair pile of bodies that had amounted near the entrance. The windowpane was broken; only shards of glass remained set in the leaden frame. Perhaps it had been shattered on this very day, by a stray bolt of energy, or a body which hit it while falling; perhaps it had simply not yet been fixed after the previous time…

--------

_From this very window, I had once watched as the few Razielim who had let themselves be captured alive had been burnt at the stake in the main courtyard of the castle. Defiant till the end; they had taken after their sire._

_I had then asked myself, as I had witnessed their ashes scatter on the wind, and soon become nothing – if the fate of Raziel's children had been worse, or better, than their executioners' oncoming demise… The vampires of the other Clans would slowly descend into the madness and oblivion of eternal coma; the Razielim had been at least afforded the honour and the chance of a death in fighting. They had used it well, felling many foes; that they had then fallen was no fault of theirs; only their destiny. In the cosmic game of chance and destiny, they had been only – collateral damage._

_When my own time came, I hoped to have better odds myself than my children had – if not stacked in my favour, then at least not against me; I have long worked to even out the chances in that anticipated fight._

_For, however much they tried, the Hylden's machinations were nothing next to the schemes of my supreme adversary; the one who sought to control the destiny of every single being in this land. And succeeded._

_Almost._

--------

He searched through the chamber, but found nothing which could be of help to him; only from the remains of the Hylden commander did he gather a most curious object: a multifaceted jewel, each of its sides a different colour. This seemed to have no immediate use; rather, it appeared to be a piece of a larger artefact; considering its bearer, possibly an important one. He retained it; expecting no further findings, he decided to leave the chamber and the building. As mist, he passed through the window; then, he leaped down to the courtyard.

Once there, he looked around. Behind his back, Raziel's symbol still adorned the wall, left unspoilt for some obscure reason. But the Razielim banners were all gone, replaced by ones he assumed to be bearing the Hylden captain's marks. These were slowly fluttering on the gentle breeze; apart from them, though, nothing moved in the courtyard. No one was coming his way; the abode was once again empty, devoid of all life.

--------

_In the middle of the courtyard I stood, thinking of this and the multitude of other losses I had been forced to suffer to arrive at the here and now. Raziel's was only the last of them, though it had singularly hurt me; for, over time, I had begun to consider him not a servant, a necessary sacrifice, or a wayward child – but a partner; perhaps my only true ally._

_And I had to ask myself – even if I justified Raziel's hope in me; even if I felled my enemies, proved that they had been correct in trying to stop me with all their might in that wild chase through the ages; even if I restored Nosgoth – whom would I rule, if all vampire had fallen long before? How had the beings who had provided for my coming planned to return?_

_But time for such questions would yet come; for now, I had quite a different goal. It appeared that I was not the only one who sought entry to the human Citadel. There was something which the Hylden wanted there; whatever that was, I would reach it first._

_And I should make haste: the Citadel's outer perimeter had been breached._

--------

He walked out to the outer courtyard; there, he found the cerulean pool of energy which would serve him to replenish his strength, and, more important, the relays which controlled the gates of the compound. Leaving behind the carnage of a full Hylden squad mercilessly slaughtered, he once again took to the path north.


	4. Fog of War

**Chapter 3**

**Fog of War**

The journey north to the human city proved rather uneventful. The road had apparently been cleared of all obstacles by the Hylden armies heading down the path some time before him; these had moved on, however, leaving only two rudimentary sentry posts on the way between their quarters in the former Razielim castle and the siege camp near the Citadel. The guards, obviously bored by the tedium of their assignment, were caught unprepared; a fortunate circumstance, for they did not find the time to escape him and alert their compatriots.

He left the road as it entered the final tunnel which would take him straight to the entrance to the city, and instead flied onto the rock in which the tunnel had been drilled. Now, standing on a ledge almost exactly over the cave's mouth, he surveyed the scene underneath.

Night was coming, though day had never truly graced Nosgoth with its presence. With night came mist; its tendrils, still thin, rose from the ground below, softening the harsh green glow of the protective Ward Shield spread out over the enemy camp. The camp was actually far smaller than he had expected – he could discern no more than ten or twenty Hylden warriors; even if he had doubled this figure by adding those who could have possibly been inside the crude buildings and tents, his enemies were still surprisingly few. The majority of soldiers must have been on the streets of the city, fighting.

To his left was the moat which had once protected the Citadel from the children of his children; now the deep chasm was crossed by several improvised bridges, which led to giant holes blasted in the high walls beyond – apparently, the mundane brick and stone of which the humans had constructed the walls had not lasted long against the Hylden's perverse technologies. Behind the walls rose the tall buildings of the Citadel, now merely silhouettes, barely visible through the white shroud. The mist must have been thicker in the city; that the Hylden continued their attack on a hostile town in such unaccommodating weather was testament to their foolishness, born of arrogance – or desperation: there was something within the Citadel which his enemies direly wanted.

--------

_The Citadel, first founded by humans fleeing the extermination of Raziel's Clan, at my behest and by my leave. During the dark centuries that were to come in the wake of the fall of the Clans, it alone had preserved the last vestiges of civilisation in Nosgoth._

_Over time, humanity had fought on both sides of the war between the Hylden and my kind. Now, the Hylden were invaders, and the humans, defenders of their only home._

_Territorial instinct is a singularly powerful force. For the time being, there was no danger that the two species would reunite behind a common purpose, even when they discovered that the third player had returned to the board._

--------

He flew from the ledge and over the fortifications, and began to make his way through the tall brick buildings of the outer city. He tried to direct himself towards the inner town, but, to his irritation, he found that he could not. The thick fog obscured even his heightened senses; and it seemed to him that many streets ran a course different from when he had last visited the Citadel. Buildings he did not recognise showed up from the fog in unexpected places, forcing him to dodge them, oft at the last moment; the old waterways were nowhere to be seen – perhaps in his absence they had been closed and built upon?

All was shadow in the cold mist – only at times did the soft glow of a still-working lamp permeate the thick milky whiteness; he flew down the deep canyons between the buildings, not too high above the ground, following the course of the streets below, over the debris, the makeshift barricades, and the relatively fresh bodies, human and Hylden alike. From left, right and front came to him the sounds of distant battle, muffled by the mist and yet scattered by it, reverberating in a thousand echoes – war cries of the unseen militants, the sizzle of magic, explosions, the clang of clashing steel; gunfire. He flew past yet another mammoth building –

To his left, the line of edifices continued unbroken; but on the right, there was a gap between the building he had just passed and the next one, leaving place enough for a wide street leading to a gate to the inner city. The plaza, dimly lit by the diffused light of several streetlamps, was eerily silent – the sounds of battle, dampened by the fog, did not reach this place. The quaint silence of the moment was incongruously dear to him, all the more so for its expected brevity; for he knew that soon, all too soon, it would be broken – because even at that moment, Hylden warriors were spilling out into the square from an egress on its far side; and even now, human soldiers lay in ambush, awaiting their moment.

The Hylden soldiers were clustered around a large cannon – which must have been one of those that had blasted the holes in the outer wall. Here, too, the mist softened the green glow of the Glyph energy which enveloped the tips of the pikes that some of the creatures bore, rendering them almost innocuous, almost like children's toys; an utterly misleading impression, belying the weapons' true lethality.

The better part of the squad – some thirty to forty soldiers, together with the heavy cannon – was already in the square when the silence was broken; the humans' attack began. A massive double explosion rippled through the buildings on the far side of the street, tearing out of its foundations the stone skywalk which joined the two houses, crashing it down on the heads of the last Hylden in the squad. The square was now effectively closed off from that side; the way he had come in was the only way out of the square; but to get to it, the Hylden would have to fight their way through their human foes.

The latter were now shooting bullets at their enemies from inside the buildings on the three sides of the square. But hits were few, and misses were many; the fog aided no side in this fight, and though initially the humans' ambush was a success, this might well change the next moment. He decided to tip the balance of the scales in the humans' favour; for the time being, their goals and his were the same – the Hylden must not be allowed to breach the inner wall of the city.

He dropped down in the middle of the Hylden squad like a giant predatory bird, and started hacking left and right with the Reaver, paying only the barest attention to his defence. He cut down several of the creatures before they even understood what was happening – that here was incarnate their worst nightmare: one of their ancient enemies, returned.

Once the Hylden recovered enough from their initial surprise to actually start defending themselves against his blows, he shot back into the air, challenging the creatures to reach him. Meanwhile, in the precious seconds in which he had held the Hylden occupied, some humans had managed to leave the houses in which they had been hiding, and were now shooting at their enemies, providing cover for the arrival of more human warriors.

Warriors and _sorcerers_ – which in itself was demonstration of how many years had passed since his departure. Throughout all the years of his Empire, sorcery had been forbidden to humans; virtually any of their kind exhibiting even the slightest traces of magical talent had been executed on spot. But now, it seemed that magical talent proliferated amongst humans again – one of the humans who had just arrived from inside the buildings unleashed a powerful wave of energy which knocked over several of the closest Hylden, dazing them, leaving them open to be finished by her armed companions –

But he would have to postpone investigating the matter for some other time – missiles, this time toxic-green, and most probably fashioned from some form of concentrated Glyph energy, were coming straight at _him_, shot out of some Hylden's weapon. He concentrated –

- dispersed into the mist –

- the missiles passed through him, doing him no harm. He returned to his usual form, and immediately made good use of his spells and the Reaver. Thanks to his Dimension spell, he would emerge from the fog behind an enemy, cut him down, and disappear again to teleport himself to another spot on the battlefield in the matter of seconds. And his Mind effigies complicated the matter for his enemies even further – from the corner of his eye he saw a Hylden shoot one of them with the Glyph-projectiles, only to hit one of his fellow soldiers who had had the misfortune to be standing behind the projection.

Strangely enough, happenstances such as this did not oft occur to the humans. Despite the fog and the confusion of a fight in progress, very few fell to their own side's fire; on the contrary, more than once did he see a mêlée fighter dodge in just the exact moment when his partner would shoot at the opponent. The soldiers must have been excellently trained. Either that, or –

But, efficient as they were, little by little his temporary allies found themselves also decreasing in number. He was fighting a Hylden wielding a pike – the long range of the weapon made it harder for him to reach the warrior, and the fact that the creature seemed to be exceptionally skilled with it did not improve the matter – when something landed at the feet of a human next to him, bursting upon touching the ground, spraying around some liquid –

He was in the air at that point, and was hit only by several droplets of the solution – which still hurt, as though it had been water – but the human had less luck. He was hit by the majority of the liquid, and, screaming wildly in pain, literally dissolved on spot: a curious effect, reminding him of a Font of Putrescence. Had _those_ been a Hylden invention in the first place?

The next moment, a fiery projectile hit the toxic puddle – he did not have the time to determine whether it had originally been spelt-fire, a fiery mixture which the humans used as a throwing weapon, or a discharge from a flamethrower – and the liquid erupted into an inferno of oddly incarnadine flames; one of many now illuminating the battlefield. Utilising the opportunity, he telekinetically pushed his opponent into the fire; the creature's screams were soon even more intense than the human's.

He laughed, and looked around in search for another opponent –

--------

The fight was over. The large cannon lay destroyed. It _had_ managed to fire once, at the beginning of the fight, bringing down a large part of the inner wall; but it had reacted quite badly to being hit by a series of telekinetic bolts, several rounds of bullets fired straight at it, and at least two nearby explosions; jamming the Reaver in the centre of its control panel had been just the finishing stroke.

--------

_Presumably too frightened of their unexpected ally to ask questions or show gratitude, the humans scattered into the mist as soon as the last of the Hylden had fallen. I was again left alone – but for the Reaver and the corpses, the only constants in my travels._

_Now that I regained my bearings in the fog, it was time to seek out the heiress of the Founder. If I had had any doubt before as to whether her line continued until this time, this fight had erased any last trace of them. For sorcery abounded amongst these humans; and there had been but one source from which they could have learnt it._

--------

Through the breach in the wall, he entered the inner city. The fighting had not yet reached here, and so it was superficially calm; but, as before in the plaza, the quietness was pregnant with tension and expectation. The streets were utterly devoid of life: all the civilians must have hidden somewhere inside.

This part of the city was less changed than the outer one; consequently, he found it easier to orient himself amongst the tall brick buildings. Eventually, he arrived at a small patio within one of the houses. A stream cut the plaza in half; a painted stone relief adorned the wall from underneath which the water flew. It showed a woman, pale-faced, dark-haired, grey-eyed, with a curiously distorted face, as though one of her cheeks had been torn into shreds and then healed again: his faithful servant, the Citadel's Founder.

--------

_Unbeknownst to most of its denizens, deep within the bowels of the Citadel a cult had once thrived, dedicated to the worship of the vampire kindred. Traitors to their race, always willing to spill another human's blood to save that flowing in their own veins, those useful fools had been led by none other than the city's own Founder and her progeny. _

_All in the Priestesses' line had been possessed of a measure of sorcery, which allowed them to charm and manipulate humans as puppets, and had employed these powers to procure sanguinary offerings for my torpid offspring. All proud hostages to the words accorded between their progenitor and me at the Citadel's inception, all had paid their tithe in blood for the continuation of the blissfully oblivious lives of the majority of their compatriots._

_I could no longer claim the allegiance of the witches. The return of Raziel and his murder of his brethren had brought them release from their dubious office. But the Citadel was in war – and in warfare, intelligence is the key to victory. I had little doubt that when word of my return reached the descendant of the clan, she would hasten to the old temple in the Undercity._

--------

He pushed the stone in which the scar had been cut – the three claws of his hand fit the grooves of the sculpture perfectly; his effort was rewarded as a part of the wall behind him opened to reveal a secret door.

He entered the dark passage, illuminated only by the light of the Reaver; the mechanism reset itself behind his back. There were some steps down; some utterly insipid and unmemorable corridors; at last, he found himself in a dark, low-ceilinged chamber. He spoke into the darkness:

"The scent of fear betrays you, human."

A small, flickering mage light showed on the far side of the room, and then drifted, finally to hover in the centre of the chamber, midway between the two of them. In the weak light, he could see the shadow of a figure; it spoke, in a strange, dreamlike, though unmistakably feminine, voice:

"Should I not be in fear? When the soldiers whispered to me of an otherworldly creature, the bearer of a flaming sword, that came to their aid and from the sky brought death upon their enemies, I could not believe them. I did not want to believe them. And yet – it is true: the Lord of all Nosgoth is returned to the Citadel, and walks in the footsteps of creatures that do not touch our blood, but take possession of our minds.

Well – what is it that the servants have that the Emperor requires?"

Faster than the blink of an eye, he moved through the small space, pinning the human to the wall with his claws. His suspicions proved correct: over the stinking, rotting wound that was the woman's right cheek, a pair of grey eyes studied him, not in fright as they should – but with a curiously absent-minded expression.

Disgusted, he released the creature. "Whatever my reasons, I did _not_ come here to waste my time speaking with puppets."

To her credit, the human knew better than to argue. "Let it be so, then. My daughter will lead you to me, my Lord."

--------

Standing on the balcony from which in long-gone times the Priestesses would oversee the dark rituals conducted in his name, he watched the swarms of humanity below.

His guide had brought him here, to the former private chambers of the leaders of the cult, via a roundabout way, through a labyrinth of passages. Now that he was arrived here, he understood his host's reasoning – had he approached through the main entrance, he would surely have caused a riot rather than just a commotion. Of the old chapterhouse of the temple of the vampire cultists, only shape remained – that of an immense oblong chamber under a barrel vault, supported only in pivotal places by several mammoth columns, with numerous side corridors leading out of the main chamber. Gone was the dim torchlight, replaced by electricity; gone were the gory remains of unholy rituals that had been taking place here for centuries – though the metallic smell of blood lingered strong in the air–

The chamber's present purpose was probably removed as far as possible from its initial function: from a place of death, it had become a place of escape, a hideout for the citizens of the city; an arsenal, hospital and command post, rolled into one. The blood he smelled was coming from a multitude of yet undressed wounds.

The puppet had left him with a simple "Mother awaits you, my Lord," and, indeed, there was some resemblance between her and the woman in whose presence he now found himself. As all of the Priestesses' line, they both were dark-haired, pale-faced, grey-eyed. The mother was middle-aged for a human – but her skin must have been prematurely worn out; several deep wrinkles crossed her forehead.

She bowed slightly at seeing him enter, "Lord Kain. I am Zroya, the great-granddaughter of the last of your Priestesses. Welcome back to the Citadel – whatever still remains of it."

"Spare me your vain pleasantries. You have asked what I require – so let me oblige your curiosity: _answers_. What do you know of the Hylden?"

The matriarch moved, clearly interested by the previously unheard word. "The Hylden? Our attackers? Too little, I'm afraid. Until several days ago, when we stumbled across their encampment in the ruins to the south, we were unaware of their very existence."

"_Days_? Your defence has fallen within _days_ of their attack? Did you even _try_ to repel it?"

The woman was now clearly on the defensive. "We were not lax in our efforts. Outnumbered, perhaps, and almost ignorant of our enemies' true strength, abilities and purpose – though the latter, we believe, we have now divined. When the enemy sorcerers possessed the minds of our warriors one by one, there was little we could do, save to kill the afflicted as they turned on us. The village to the east was taken first, obliterated in this fashion even before they attacked us here; now it serves as the headquarters for their army."

"I have seen the encampment. But not one human who would appear possessed."

Bemused, she answered the unspoken accusation, "No – and that is an even more puzzling matter. We _had_ been losing, but several hours ago the tide of battle altered. The possessions stopped suddenly, as abruptly as they had started. We don't have any clue as to what may have caused it."

He suddenly understood. "It is unnecessary – I _do_. You spoke of the Hylden's purpose here?"

"Not_ here_, my Lord. Not in the strict sense of the matter."

Slightly annoyed, he pressed on. "_Where_, then?"

"High in the mountains to the northwest. We saw lights there, where nothing had ever been seen before, mere days before meeting these creatures in the ruined city. It cannot be a coincidence. They want nothing _in_ the city; they want to pass _through_ it, to get there. The Citadel simply stands in their way."

"Are you sure that the Citadel blocks the only path?" There was, after all, quite an obvious gap in the witch's reasoning.

But he could hear no hesitation in Zroya's voice as she answered. "For earthbound creatures – yes. It had been built this way on purpose, so that we would be defended from an attack from that direction."

"How fortunate, then, that I am not an earthbound creature."

For a moment, the woman hesitated, as though she wanted to say something – perhaps even to beseech his aid in saving her city. At last, however, common sense prevailed over desperation, and she said only, clearly resigned, "Zosha will show you the shortest way to the northwest gate, my Lord."

--------

_I knew of only one being who could have possibly returned from the demonic dimension still bestowed of flight – and it was precisely the one whose presence anywhere in Nosgoth would justify the inordinate haste with which the Hylden now tried to reach the mountains. Janos Audron. Had he managed to elude the Hylden during all the time he had been imprisoned together with them in that shadowy realm, and had returned to Nosgoth in the wake of their armies? Or had he been the creatures' captive, but had somehow managed to escape them after they had returned?_

_And if Janos were still alive, and somewhere in the northwest mountains – what was his purpose there? Was he simply in hiding – or was there some ulterior motive for his presence there?_

_It seemed that my foray into the Citadel begat as many questions as it had answered._

--------

It was time for him to re-enter the fog.


	5. The Place of Birth

**Chapter 4**

**The Place of Birth**

_Thump!_ The dull sound of the cast-iron drawbridge hitting the ground on the other side of the moat reverberated loudly through the silence.

The rapid mountain river which had furrowed this canyon beyond the Citadel – the same which, on passing through the city, provided its defences – flowed to the right of the stony path up which the guide was now leading him. The path was rising sharply, and soon all that could tell him that the river continued somewhere down there was its sound.

His guide was walking to his right, between him and the river – perhaps due to some misguided concern for his safety, or perhaps because of some equally ridiculous desire to protect her own privacy by closing off the sight of her unbecoming wound to him. Perhaps there was _no_ reason, and he was simply growing bored enough by the utter non-existence around him to foster such preposterous concepts: apart from the human and the spelt light in front, there was nothing moving, nothing of interest to be seen around. The fog was thinning slowly – but only to be replaced by the darkness of the starless Nosgoth night. The night that, by all rights, should be filled with the hunting calls of the predators and the screams of prey – but was completely lifeless. The only thing that still remained of Nosgoth's nature were its black plants –

The Citadel was just about to disappear in the darkness behind them, even to his sensitive eyes, when the guide stopped. They had reached the top of the hump in the road; before them, the path dropped steadily, finally to become immersed again in the shroud of the fog. But the outcropping on which they were now both standing offered a convenient view of the mountains in front. The nearest peak – almost a tall hill rather than a mountain – was very close; he felt almost as if he could touch it.

The guide spoke. "There, my Lord – to the east of the top of this mount. The lights were visible through the smoke – they must have been really strong –"

She did not have a chance to finish; because at that moment, the shooting began.

--------

Filtered through the milkiness of the mist below, the lights gained an eerie, ethereal glow. The fast green bolts were undoubtedly dispatches from a Glyph-projectile weapon; the blue halos, demonic auras; the red streaks, hellfire. He watched as one of the blue halos died out; then another. Then, the shooting stopped.

Then, heavy steps sounded, and two mammoth, horned heads emerged from the fog.

Then, a small tripartite metal object shot out of the human's hand in the direction of the monsters, followed rapidly by two others. From the look of it, the blades must have been guided by magic – they homed in on the demons unerringly, embedding themselves in the creatures' flesh. For a moment, nothing happened; and then, the devices exploded, one after another, sending pieces of the demons far up in all directions.

And _then_, as a shower of green blood and flesh was falling on them and all around them, he withdrew the Reaver from the innards of the blue demon which had teleported behind their backs.

--------

It was a single Hylden warrior with a Glyph rifle. Just as he had seen through the mist, he had managed to dispatch two demons – before the rest got through its defence. Now his body, burnt into a crisp by the fiends' fire, was lying on the bank of the stream, halfway on the path, halfway in water. The demons' carcasses lay nearby, with a swarm of large holes blown right through them; the Hylden evidently believed in the effectiveness of brute strength. Kain's guide, kneeling next to the Hylden's body, was fiddling in the enchanted light with the weapon that had wrought those wounds; her face, and whatever thoughts regarding this development could have reflected on it, was lost to him, hidden in the shadow of her hood.

"Your mother was certain that no one on foot could circumvent the Citadel," he said.

"She was telling the truth," the human answered slowly, cutting something off from the Hylden's armour. "This creature shouldn't be here. Nor should those – _things_ – it was running from –" Looking up sharply straight at him, she asked, "Am I of any further use to you, my Lord?"

From the height of his stature, he examined leisurely the small, scruffy figure squatted on the ground, watching him expectantly. "Not really."

"Then, by your leave –" She slipped the knife back into its boot holster, and, picking up the Hylden's rifle from the ground, started to rise.

"I do not grant it."

The human froze midway in her move, as if pinned in place by the force of the words. For a moment, she appeared to be fighting the treacherous part of herself which was betraying her own will – but lost: she sagged back to the ground, her head slumped between her arms.

"Clearly," he continued, "you have some suspicions regarding the provenience of this corpse. Why not share them?"

Despite the phrasing, this was not an invitation; and, like her mother, the daughter was intelligent enough to recognise it. But the answer she gave was cryptic, at most. "The ruins."

Evidently she believed him omniscient, a mind-reader, or both. It irritated him that he was only the latter of the two – the Chronoplast portals had been curiously unaccommodating with regards to this era, as though there were too many time-streams, too many possibilities to show –

"This entire _world_ is in ruin! Which particular ones you have in mind? Quick – I would rather not be forced to destroy it to receive my answers."

She sighed, and, picking up the weapon again, once more got to her feet. "The derelict city in the frozen marshes. The path by which we came ends here – but if one walks in the river's bed, it is possible to traverse the caverns carved by its flow to the other side of the mountain. And that is the _only_ way: the marshes are closed off tightly from any other side. That's why Mother –"

"Evidently, your mother was mistaken in her calculations. But what is this city?"

She shrugged. "Little but a few stone walls and the outlines of foundations, mostly flooded by the river and covered by a thin layer of ice. Treacherous terrain for one unacquainted with the safe paths – especially by night. I'm surprised that the creature made it this far."

"Fear is a powerful motivator." Acknowledging the human's resolve to pursue her path, he added, with a brusque nod, "Be on your way – whichever way you choose. If you head north, we may yet meet again."

--------

_As my human guide vanished into the dark caves, leaving me alone in the obscurity of the Nosgoth night, I considered the new development. The riddle of the Hylden attack, which I had deemed resolved, returned – if the Hylden had already entered this territory, why were they attacking the Citadel with such ferocity? The matriarch of the city was confident that nothing of value was hidden there; and I knew that, within reason, I could trust her words. She would not have consciously misguided me had she had any confidence that she could retain me in the Citadel._

_Yet, another aspect of the matter was perhaps more worrisome: the Pillar of the Mind was restored, protecting the minds of Nosgoth's inhabitants – perhaps more efficiently than ever since Janos Audron had fallen to the blades of the Sarafan warrior-priests. But why did its twin, the Pillar of Dimension, still permit the entrance of demons to Nosgoth?_

--------

He took off into the darkness of the starless night, aiming to circumnavigate the peak of the mountain from the east. Air was still very much of a new milieu for him, the down-to-earth being that he was; for a brief moment, he savoured its cold caress on his wings – but soon, the Soul Reaver began to weigh heavily on his back. He welcomed back the mundane soil without much grief.

And it proved a good thing that he had not let himself be distracted by the newfound sensation; for the very moment he alighted on the frosted soil, a welcome committee appeared from the darkness. Five demons: it was time once more for the Reaver to sing its deadly song.

The first fiend fell, decapitated, within seconds. The next monster lasted a bit more, as he had to fly back up to avoid its fiery breath; then, it also fell, cut vertically in half with a forceful blow. The third one he had then shot in the air with the Air spell he commanded; disoriented, the creature impotently witnessed its both electric feelers being cut off; then it, too, was decapitated. The fourth one, which had attempted to sneak on him from behind, suddenly found itself alone. _Very_ alone.

He finished it off with a few offhand cuts, and scanned the surroundings for the fifth monster. It had lingered behind its companions, and was now hovering in some distance from him, right on the brink of an ice sheet; a telekinetic push was enough to deal with it. The thin layer of ice gave way under the fiend's weight, and the current of water, rapid in this place, drew it under the ice cover and out of his sight. He looked around, remembering –

--------

_Time had not been kind to the place of my birth. The plague that had ravaged Coorhagen in the time I had made my fledgling travels had marked the beginning of its descent and eventual fall. The Coorhagen that my legions had burnt to the ground had already been little but a shadow of its quondam glory._

_What little remained after the fires had extinguished would suffer in one of the multitude of Nosgoth's earthquakes; finally, water had struck the finishing blow, inundating the city's corpse – and yet, at the same time, preserving a memory of Coorhagen in eternal ice._

_A memory which, I would soon learn, hid another, far more ancient one._

--------

Slowly, he began to make his way through the marshes in search for something that would explain the presence of demons and the interest of the Hylden in this remote corner of Nosgoth. There was no fog on this side of the mountain, but the guide had not exaggerated – this was, indeed, perilous landscape, for both human and vampire. Thin layers of ice covered the flooded areas, ready to cave in under his weight without the slightest warning, had he been so foolish as to rest his feet on them. He would not risk a burn, however, and, if he felt the need to descend to ground, only stopped on the islets of permafrost which peeked out sporadically from under the ice.

From time to time, he came across the remnants of stone walls – the only remainders that, indeed, some three millennia before, this place had been colourful, and not monochrome; a city, and not a necropolis; teeming with life – and not demons; because, though all else was lacking here, demons were aplenty –

He had just finished off another group of them, and had stopped for a moment by a pool of energy gathered in some ruined house – one of the fiends had managed to slip a vicious blow through his defences, and he decided to wait until the wound closed before proceeding further – when he saw again the faint glow of the enchanted light piercing through the darkness, not far from his current position: apparently, the human had managed to pass through the caves.

The scout was nowhere to be seen when he approached the light; but that which he found instead proved far more interesting: the corpses of several Hylden warriors, though barely recognisable as such – they appeared to have been quite literally torn into shreds. Without a doubt, this was the work of the fiends that had invaded the marshes.

"There are more, both corpses and their assassins, to the north." The human stepped out of the darkness on the other side of the light. Her grey clothes made her inconspicuous, blending her almost seamlessly with the shadows.

"The Hylden attempted to escape the demons," he concluded. "Did you encounter any survivors in the caves?"

"No."

The answer arrived a fraction of a second too fast for his liking. He looked up from the bodies to confirm that the human was lying –

The hood of the human's camouflage clothing was now down, for the first time since they had left the Citadel, and for the first time he could really look into her eyes, over that hideous wound on the cheek that she had been yearning to hide. There was a careful lack of expression in the eyes, so careful that it could not have been due to anything but the most meticulous effort of conscious will. But something else in these eyes captured his attention –

As he watched the human, her eyes _changed_ – for the briefest of moments, so fast that if he had blinked, he would have missed it entirely – they were not grey, but completely white, iris-less; but with a wisp of the most virulent, phosphorescent green issuing from them; and for that brief moment, he had the feeling that something much _different_ from this puny human was looking back at him. And he remembered how, back in Avernus, Raziel's eyes had turned a similar colour even as his firstborn had attacked him –

The vision disappeared quickly; but the suspicions it had spawned remained in place.

"Tell me, Zosha," he said coolly, "does your mother know that you harbour the seed of your enemy in your blood?"

"_What_?" For a moment, the scout appeared dumbstruck; then, understanding dawned in her eyes. "You saw–" Her left hand rose unconsciously to her cheek and eyes; amusedly, he noticed that at the same time, the other hand surreptitiously primed the Glyph rifle. At last, the human seemed to recover her wits in full, and answered, "She does."

"Do not dare lie to me, human," he snarled.

It did not take much to make the scout lose her previous cool disposure. "No! It –" she scrambled for words – "is contained, at least for now. Mother assumed that my resilience was due to our natural strength in mind magic. After all, all the others in the Ash Village –"

He interrupted her disjointed excuses, "Perhaps your mother is right. Lead the way: we will travel together now."

Something – the shadow of anger, apprehension, or perhaps relief – crossed Zosha's eyes as she wordlessly set out forward. It quickly faded into nothingness, leaving only her customary blank, unreadable expression: it was clear that she believed his placating words as little as little effort he had put in to make them appear such.

--------

_Although the human may have believed the lies her mother had fed her, I knew better: my experience with Mortanius had taught me that humans could endure years under possession – if it were to the possessor's benefit._

_But the experience of aeons had also cured me of the impetuousness of my youth. I would travel with the Hylden for now; in all likelihood, the mind which lay behind the scout's knew our destination better than either of us did._

--------

They followed the trail of Hylden and demon carcasses north through the frozen remnants of the city, killing what demons they came across. The scout turned out to be of little help – although she must have had some combat experience and training, and was an almost adequate fighter, making use of both the flay-cum-explosive devices and the Hylden warrior's rifle, the mammoth beasts were clearly out of her league. The brunt of the fighting was on him: on that night, as on the previous day, the Reaver would feast on souls.

He only hoped that, one day, Raziel's magnanimous gift would –

He espied yet another group of demons in some distance before him; they, in turn, occupied as they were with a pile of Hylden bodies, hadn't noticed him yet. He counted the fiends: seven – not the most, or the least, difficult fight in the marshes so far.

He fell into what by this point was familiar routine: first, Mind projections which would buy him precious seconds, quickly followed by the Dimension spell, in order to deal as much damage as possible in the limited time; then –

The Reaver sang for the last time as the last demon fell. He sheathed it, and walked up to the disjointed Hylden bodies –

And then, another batch of demons teleported in, surrounding him from all sides. It was only his vampire instinct that saved him – he shot up into air mere fraction of a second before the fiery breath of a red demon struck the ground where he had been standing, melting the snow into a puddle of water. The demon soon paid for its audacity as the Reaver devoured its soul – but as he was killing it, a telekinetic projectile from another creature hit him, sending him far up and away from his enemies. He recovered his lost balance after a moment, and, gathering his remaining spell-casting power, dove back to the battlefield, midway in the lunge creating a powerful updraft of air which brought the fiends to him and in the path of the Reaver –

He heard shots fired from the Glyph rifle. Apparently, the human had problems of her own – he sneered in contempt: most probably, she had let herself be seen by some of the demons, and now had to deal with the result of her lack of caution. He pulled the Reaver from the eye-socket of the last fiend; the creature hit the ground with a dull thud – and whirled around mid-flight to look in the direction of the shots –

The human was standing with her back protected by the corner of a derelict building, frantically shooting at a pair of red demons which were heading in her direction with their deceptive slowness; the carcass of a green fiend already lay in the ground in front of her –

Suddenly, the shots stopped. For the briefest of moments, the scout looked at the rifle in disbelief; but the moment did not last long, and, throwing the weapon in the general direction of the fiends – a thoroughly ineffectual move – she began a frantic search for her throwing blades.

By this time, he was already heading towards the building, already knowing that he would arrive too late: one of the creatures was already taking in the air that would fuel its fiery breath, and within seconds –

The human looked straight at him, with a curiously apologetic look, and blinked out of existence.

The next moment, a handful of the explosive flays shot out from the darkness behind him, narrowly missing him on their way to their hapless targets. He turned around again: the demons were already as well as dead –

The scout was standing atop the pile of the Hylden bodies, looking for all she was worth as though she had been one of them, her eyes aglow with the unholy emerald fire. Evidently, her mind had finally snapped under the pressure of the Hylden intrusion on her psyche –

He used his telekinetic powers to shackle the scout in place until he got to her – but the force of the spell was absorbed by a Glyph shield the possessed creature cast at the last moment; and then, protected by her shield, she cast one more spell – and was gone. He looked around himself, assessing the situation – he knew that she could not have teleported herself anywhere far; such feat would be simply beyond the human's power, no matter her possessor's ability –

The first thing that struck him was that, absorbed in the fighting as he had been, he had failed to notice the change in scenery. Behind him was the inundated city – but before him stretched the white wall of the glacier from which the river which engendered the marshes sprang. It was covered by a thin layer of snow – and, in places where the demons' fire had hit, sporting quickly freezing puddles of water.

And, within a distance, near another pool of stagnant energy, there was a narrow opening cut in the monolithic wall of ice; by the looks of its jagged edges, by the Glyph rifles of the Hylden soldiers.

He changed into his wolf form, and entered the fissure cautiously, agonizingly aware of the volatile balance of the tunnel, and the masses of ice above him and around him. After several turns, the ice passage gave way to a tunnel cut in rock; once upon a time, aeons ago, its entrance would have been open to the world outside. There was more place for him here; he shifted back –

--------

_The walls of the tunnel were adorned with murals of figures, their appearance unmistakably vampiric. Bent in reverence, they performed unholy rites which purported to appease the wrath of their god._

_I knew all too well the idol which they worshipped: for in all the scenes, a constant motif repeated. The sign of my enemy. The sigil of the Wheel of Fate._

--------

"What _is_ this place?"

The tunnel opened into a large grotto. Its centre was occupied by a circular pond surrounded by a low stone wall – he was immediately reminded of both Moebius's secret room under the Sarafan keep, and the Oracle chamber in the ancient vampire Citadel; but unlike those, this pond was frozen by the sub-zero temperatures in the cavern. The walls of the shrine around the pond were also covered with the murals depicting the dark rituals; the figures in the paintings looked as if they were moving. Vampires worshipped their deity again, brought back to life by the flickering light of the human's spell.

Zosha was standing in the middle of the cavern, looking around herself in clear awe. She appeared to be lucid and back in control of herself for the moment; her eyes were returned to their natural dull grey. He stepped into the cavern – a detached part of his mind noted a warp gate on one of the walls: this, then, was how the Hylden had arrived in this part of Nosgoth –

"A shrine devoted to a fraudulent god," he answered at last.

"Oh. Not unlike –"

But before she finished the sentence, the emerald light returned to Zosha's eyes, now again white and iris-less. When she spoke again, her voice sounded very differently, much older and inhuman –

"Ah. It appears that without asking the question, I received the answer."

Fast as only a vampire could be, he got to the human, lifting her in front of him by the throat so that he could look straight into the possessed eyes – the hunt had become far too boring far too long ago –

"And who dares speak to me so?"

"Maat'ash'Eirene, who salutes the Scion of Balance... How regretful it is that we cannot continue this conversation now. We shall meet again, of course."

"Of course. Until that time –"

He struck. Hard.

--------

When the eyes reopened, they were grey again. Grey – and moribund: within the depths of his mind, owing to the ancient gift even he did not fully understand, he could feel the human's soul of as it tried to slip through his claws, to become useless to him; to enter his enemy's precious Wheel of Fate.

"An average human can lose a litre of blood before the pressure on the vessels is too small to sustain circulation," he spoke calmly, as though he were making a casual comment at a feast in one of his son's castles. "You are approaching that limit fast. Your mind is almost irreversibly damaged as a result of the Hylden incursion. _Almost_. Make your decision – do you want to live to see your revenge?"

It did not take long for her to decide; she could not speak, of course – but the Whispered word he heard was as loud as a scream.

"Then you will take that which is offered." In the darkness of the cave, his simple words sounded like a proclamation.

He slashed at his arm, just above the gauntlet. The cut closed almost instantly, but not before several drops of his blood fell on the creature's cheek, on the wound he had reopened, the wound from which the red, life-giving, deceptively clear and pure blood was now spewing out.

But when the droplets hit the wound, it seethed and boiled; green foam started to emerge from it. The human howled in pain like an animal –

In the end, the whole process did not last long – after a moment, the froth ceased to come out; the inhuman howling stopped; and then, the wound began to close as the tender flesh of a new scar started to form.

--------

"Wh-what happened?" Speaking still hurt; but, at least, her mind was clear and belonged to her again.

The powerful creature that Mother had told her was the vampire lord who had once been the ruler of Nosgoth, then had been missing for a century, and now had returned, looked at her from where he was studying, with an incongruously sad expression, some detail of the blade of that peculiar sword that he wielded. She felt embarrassed, as if she had intruded on some intimate moment.

That impression passed quickly, as the – _entity_, she could not find any other word to describe him – said matter-of-factly, "The catalyst present in my blood expunged the Hylden poison from your mind and veins. That – and more."

"Oh." She tried to rise, and discovered that it was far easier than she had thought; in fact, for someone who was cold, hungry, tired, and, above all, had not expected to live this long – otherwise, she would never have embarked on this mad chase after Hylden phantoms in the first place, and without a proper weapon, at that – she was faring, and feeling, surprisingly well. A suspicion crossed her mind, harking back to the memory of something she had been told by Mother long ago – "Am I – one of your kind now?"

"You are afraid of becoming a beast, are you not?" His voice was dripping with contempt. "You need not _worry_. You are no _vampire_. Merely – a human who has felt the touch of the divine. You can feel it in your veins, do you not?"

Suddenly, she _could_. And, as he spoke on –

"The sudden onrush of power – the feeling of invincibility... With time, this will pass. What gifts you have received will not."

--------

He watched as the human tried to absorb the knowledge – what little of it there was; he hadn't been entirely sure himself what the result of his little experiment would be. He changed the topic, reminding the human of her end of the transaction:

"I will teleport you to the Citadel; tell your mother that you are now _mine._ Take over command, gather the troops – I grant you my leave to share your gift – retake the city and head to the Ash Village."

For a moment, she looked doubtful – but then, she touched her cheek, tracing the triple scar which his talons had left in it. He laughed, "I see you understand. You arenow a mirror image of the Founder of your line – for a very similar reason, I might add. The troops _will_ follow you."

"Once you reach the Village," he continued after a moment, "destroy the Ward Shield. You may kill everyone you encounter –" a crooked smile graced the mutilated face – "apart from the commander. That one is mine."

The smile turned fleetingly into an impatient grimace, before disappearing altogether in a careful non-expression. Recognising the symptoms, he laughed: the youth were so utterly predictable –

"Defying me already? At least wait until you have more power... Now," he continued, no longer laughing, "I put you in command. Therefore, should anything happen to the commander, I will hold you responsible. Should he fall on his own sword, or his weapon misfire, or lightning strike him – or if he takes a bad step, and, by pure chance, falls into the Abyss – I will hold _you_ responsible for his misfortune. Am I understood?"

"Yes, my Lord," she bowed slightly, once more the obedient soldier.

"Then go. Destroy the Hylden in my name."

--------

He sent the human off to her kindred, and was now again alone with the Reaver. He looked around – when he had struck the human unconscious, the spelt light had vanished; and with it had ended the _danse macabre_ of the figures on the walls: vampires had lain again to their peaceful rest. He turned to the frozen pond in the centre, and whispered, half to it, half to himself:

"When every last sentient being in Nosgoth is immune to your treacherous appeal – what will you do then, _hub of the Wheel of Fate_?"

--------

_Even the healing of a land has to start somewhere. When I had ordered Raziel to be cast into the Abyss, it had been such a beginning; his refusal to kill me at the tomb of William the Just had been another; needless to say, so had been his ultimate terrible sacrifice._

_This was, perhaps, another in the series of such beginnings. In one move, by taking a Hylden pawn and converting her into my own tool, I had assured my sovereignty over humankind – and, far more importantly, deprived my avowed enemy of any future servants._

_And now, the time came for the next step of my journey. Wherever it would take me, I would enter the portal._


	6. Remembrance of Things Past

**Chapter 5**

**Remembrance of Things Past**

There was the familiar sense of displacement –

And then, the even _more_ familiar sense of being attacked. He snarled as he turned briefly to mist to dodge the massive fist of the animate suit of armour that assaulted him the very moment he came out of the Warp Gate –

_Golems. _How he abhorred them. Animate yet lifeless, possessed of neither blood nor soul; brought to existence by some arcane magic of States which had been forever lost to Nosgoth with Anarcrothe's passing – one even _he_ had never managed to master. The Reaver would fare little better than the least of vulgar swords against these statues.

Behind him, the portal inactivated itself in a small, yet – given the contained space of the cul-de-sac in which he now found himself – rather spectacular explosion, cutting off his only means of escape, were escape ever in his mind. The shattered pieces of the Warp Gate, thrust forward along the corridor by the force of the blast, narrowly missed him on their way to their destinations. Some shards actually _did_ hit the two golems whose blows he was now busy trying to avoid; the statues did not appear to be particularly affected by this.

– strike, dodge –

He reverted to the now habitual tactic of spelling Mind effigies to gain time whilst he pounded his opponents. Golems had really only one advantage to vouch for them: their durability. The things _were_ destructible – he had lost count of how many of them he had destroyed in the Vampire Citadel – but it took time to deal with them. Time and _only_ time – there was little need for finesse of moves –

– dodge, strike, strike again –

Golems had no vital piece which, once hit, would immobilise them; he had to literally chip away piece after piece off of them. It pained him to see the Reaver relegated to a function well enough served by a common axe; the blade was far too noble for such a pedestrian assignment. Especially –

– dodge –

To his tastes, the fight had taken long enough already. He threw one golem into the far wall of the passage with a telekinetic blast – which would only momentarily delay it, but this would be enough. Then, he used the Dimension spell to get behind the other statue; and then, rammed the exploding Flay whereof he had relieved the human when she had lain unconscious in the underground temple into the gap between its helmet and chest-plate.

And then, he shoved the golem telekinetically into the first one, already recovered and heading his way in its slow, heavy gait.

He did not wait to see the results of his stratagem; and it was a good thing he did not – as the force of the second explosion rocked the corridor, its structural support already weakened by the previous blast, the passage started to crumble around him. With vampiric speed, he raced along the walkway, navigating between the falling blocks of dark stone –

The passage opened into another, wider hall; he arrived there mere fraction of a second before the side corridor finally collapsed into a pile of rubble. There was no going back that way – not that he could think of a reason to do so at the moment. But now, that he finally had the time, he stopped to get his bearings –

--------

_These bleak corridors were familiar to me... I had walked them many times in my past, in the epoch of my Empire; and for the first time, centuries before, whilst I had made my fledgling travels. For this was the wreck of Malek's Bastion; and the lifeless wardens which had just attacked me, I had first encountered in the Paladin's employ._

_But in my recent journey into Nosgoth's past, I had seen places and learnt truths which neither the fledgling nor the Emperor had known. I now recognised this architecture of red-veined obsidian from my venture into the ancient Citadel. The golems; the shrine from which I had arrived; the portal which had brought me here – all hinted in one direction: Malek had not so much _constructed_ this place as merely _occupied_ it after its original inhabitants – vampires – had been annihilated; perhaps it was even he and his Sarafan followers who had exterminated them all._

_The ancient defence system had been inactive for millennia when I had last visited the fortress – indeed, I had thought it completely destroyed. But now, the golems had awakened again; at whose behest, I wondered._

--------

Sickly green light poured into the dark hallways from the cracks in the ceiling where the lava-glass finally gave way after millennia of wear. It painted the same tint the occasional patch of snow accumulated underneath the fissures, transforming it into a mockery of the luxurious verdure he had seen in that other land that had been the past of Nosgoth; it also provided illumination for the scene of carnage which now stretched before his eyes: bodies, demon and Hylden, relatively fresh, but cruelly bent out of shape by the sustained wounds, scattered on the pitch-black floor amongst the masses of accrued snow and rubble.

He followed the trail of bodies in the direction which, he vaguely remembered, led into the heart of the fortress, dealing on his way with the golems which were patrolling the deserted castle; more than once stopping by a font of eldritch energy to recover his depleted strength and magic powers. At last, he turned into yet another long obsidian colonnade; green light entered it from its far end. The speck of light grew as he approached it; halfway through the corridor, it was revealed to be an opening; finally, as he drew close to it –

It was as if some powerful force had cut the Bastion in twain at this place, almost disintegrating one part of the building, whilst leaving the other part relatively untouched. And this was, after all, what had in fact happened.

--------

_The remembrance of things long now past, this deep crater marked the place where the donjon housing Malek's throne room had once stood. It had been during my first confrontation with the Paladin that the central tower had been destroyed, by the formidable wave of energy unleashed by my foe's impotent wrath after he had failed to slay his chosen quarry._

_The corpses I had encountered, both here and in Coorhagen's ruins, spoke of a far more recent drama to have unfurled here. To uncover its details, and reveal its actors, I would need to investigate further; for now, I had little doubt that the lights to which the human witch had alluded had originated in this very place. Though in a roundabout way, I had arrived whither I had intended to reach; more – by luck, or fate, I had found the only path here now accessible to my kind. The protective cocoon of the active Ward Shield would have stood in my path if I had attempted to approach the Bastion by air._

_As it was, the Shield blocked my egress from the plateau; and if Janos Audron was somewhere within these ruins, he was likewise trapped._

--------

Green and black filled his field of vision – the green of the Glyph energy of the dome above him, reflected in the patches of snow on the ground underneath him; and the black of the towers, shooting high up from the snow and the mountain of rubble in the three other corners of the castle. The closest, northwest tower seemed as good a place as any to begin his search for the clues as to just what had occurred here – and for the machinery which he knew he would have to deactivate to be able to depart this place.

He even espied an inviting opening high up in the dark tower's wall –

--------

"And so, however tardy, arrives the vampire lord I have been promised: _Kain_. Eirene's foresight proved true, as always... and just when I was beginning to doubt it."

As it turned out, he did not have to search long. He had entered only the fourth or fifth equally nondescript hall – they were all tall, empty, black-on-black with the occasional spot of nauseant green where the light of the Shield enflamed the snow; deserted but for the occasional golem or two – when he heard the greeting, spoken in the raspy voice of a Hylden. Taking the Reaver off his back, searching the utter darkness of the room for the voice's owner, he demanded:

"Eirene? A _Seer_ – foretold my coming here?"

"Here – and to the Pillars: the only remnants of your accursed civilisation to still exist in Nosgoth; _yes_. And so we have rushed, my siblings and I, to give the coming lord a proper welcome... Only that _he_ would not present himself." Twin emerald lights appeared in the darkness not five paces from him as the voice continued, full of scorn, "If punctuality is the politeness of monarchs, it will not be difficult for me to –"

He spun around, setting the Reaver between himself and the Hylden, "I see little reason to pay courtesy to some anonymous upstart who pretends to my throne. I _have_ met one of your brood at the Pillars: the coward died by her own hand on learning my identity. And perhaps of you two, _she_ was the wiser."

The twin lights flared up, but almost immediately dimmed back; the voice which answered was calm – perhaps too much so:

"If you think to upset me, Yarovit of the Royal House, into some foolishness born of anger – know that you have failed; as has failed that little demon rebellion that you have orchestrated. How ironic that it should be the creations of _your_ kind which should aid us against _our_ mutinied servants; how even more so that, in the absence of my troops, they should aid me against you, _now_."

As the voice spoke, the lights were outshined by a fulgent emerald glow in which he easily recognised teleportation magic; as the spell took hold, they disappeared, and with them, his hidden interlocutor. But he would not be alone in the dark chamber for long; soon, true to Yarovit's words, the echo of heavy footsteps reverberated through the darkness of the empty hall.

_Golems_.

He shot into the air, as far above as he sensed he could go; this promised to be a long, if uninspired, fight –

--------

– He drove the Reaver down, putting himself briefly in an extremely precarious situation as he committed his whole impetus to the blow. The cut, however powerful, produced only a small dent in the animate suit of armour – but this was enough: the energy amassed within the statue started to seep out through the crack. Knowing what would follow, he returned up into the safety of air –

– The statue shattered, giving birth to myriad shards. One of the larger parts – perhaps the head, he neither knew nor cared – hit the wall, hard, weakening the already timeworn structure; green light started to seep through the crack, as only seconds before had seeped the white glow through the dent in the golem's armour. He shot a telekinetic bolt at the damaged part of the wall – and the eldritch glow poured through the opening, as it was now pouring through so many others –

– The chamber was now quite well-lit, and thus he could see how many golems were still inside: but this calculation was, in the end, unnecessary; for he had just dealt the finishing blow. The tower, destabilized by the many subsequent explosions, tumbled down all around him, crushing the golems underneath the falling blocks –

– He left the collapsing building at almost the last moment, flying as high up as possible; only to grimace in pain as his left wing grazed the Ward Shield. In the air, he waited for the smoke and rubble to set down; whilst he waited, he had the time to recover his scattered strength and thoughts.

--------

_Janos Audron was not in this place; he had never visited it – not in this era, at least. The parlay with my enemy, brief as it was, told me that much: for it was _me_ whom this Hylden princeling had awaited so eagerly, guided to the Bastion by the words of a Seer._

_Maat'ash'Eirene, it appeared, had foretold this meeting; our own confrontation was now inevitable. Whatever else of my fate was known to the Hylden Seer, _I_ would also learn._

--------

When he smoke finally settled, he spotted an opening in the northeast tower's wall: this would be his next target. He flew up to the ledge; then, he turned into mist to pass through the bars which stood in his way. Once inside, he proceeded cautiously through the maze of the desolate, uninviting corridors: many of those had been rendered impassable by time; some had turned into deadly traps – deadly, that is, for one less agile than he was: falling blocks of stone, moved from their proper places by the explosion of the northwest tower; unsound floor in places where the low ceiling made it impossible for him to fly –

He was now deep within this dark warren – to his best estimate, two or three levels beneath the topmost floor – in yet another dead-ended passage. This time, however, he would not need to retrace his steps, as he had to do the previous two or three times: the wall before him was critically compromised; it took but a single telekinetic bolt to destroy it completely. He entered the chamber through the narrow crack –

--------

"So, the lord managed to destroy the golems... after all. That is well: I have almost begun to grow impatient again."

This must have once been the heart of this tower: a large, square hall, bathed in a cruel, sterile radiance whose source he could not really determine. Rubble littered the floor – there were even several large boulders; one of those lay near the very centre of the room. The ceiling was surprisingly low – whether by luck or acumen, his opponent had chosen his battleground well: when the fight came, Kain would scarcely have the place to attack from air. Of course, given that the vampire lord had fought flat-footed for millennia, it was not _that_ much of a disadvantage.

The commander himself was standing in one of the farther corners of the room, next to some intricate piece of machinery; he must have been tinkering with it when he had heard the loud crash of the breaking wall –

It was Kain's first opportunity to see the creature in full. A dubious pleasure: Yarovit was nothing but a twisted mass of metal and bone, welded together by the sinister forces of the demon realm whence he hailed, only vaguely resembling in shape even his own malformed warriors. Appraising the creature – and taking note of the five golems, still inactive, scattered across the room – the vampire lord answered:

"Impatient – for your death, Hylden? Are you _that_ keen to escape the prison where your kin belongs?"

The Hylden laughed; that is, if the raspy voice coming from the abomination could possibly be called laughter. "Impatient for my victory, vampire! It is unavoidable: Maat'ash'Eirene bespoke your fall at the hand of one of us. Sakhmet, as you spoke, is dead; without her, Perun cannot possibly hope to fell you. My win is certain, _yes_ – not that it will make it any less sweet when –"

"– _if_ it comes," he interjected smoothly.

The small stones grated under his feet as Kain approached his opponent; he was now near the giant boulder which marked the centre of the room. The Hylden, to his credit, had not given ground; had not moved from his stand by the odd contraption. Now, haughty and arrogant as only one born to power can be, he replied –

"It _will_ come. Only the Traitor of old could have possibly boasted a Sight acuter than Eirene's. The Traitor: strange that this place should bring a remembrance of _her_... or mayhap not so."

"The Traitor?" he demanded – he believed he knew to whom Yarovit was referring; and yet –

Given the Hylden's angry answer, his question must have struck a chord.

"The Traitor: Maat, the Queen, the Prophetess, the greatest of our Seers; the one who forespoke the coming of the Champion and the one lost, taken prisoner by the Enemy... This whole city was burnt to ground when the rescue party came here in search of her; but their efforts proved fruitless: the deserter had already left with her new masters for the Citadel of Tears! And then –"

The voice broke for a moment, but then continued, regaining its initial composure, "And then, the thousand-year war was over, and the time for our banishment had come – but Maat remained behind; and so, at last, we learnt of her betrayal. The Traitor: _yes_. Eirene is her daughter, blood of her blood. For that, she both suffers and is exalted – for with the blood of the traitor came the gift of prophecy."

It was Kain's turn to laugh. "Then you have staked your miserable life on the gossamer prophecy of a traitor's daughter? Very well: let us see if _words_ should save you from the _Reaver_." He unsheathed the blade: it hummed, as though Raziel's soul within it also anticipated the fight and the kill.

But even now, there was no doubt in the Hylden's voice as the commander answered calmly, drawing his own sword from its scabbard, "_Yes_. Let us see. My victory awaits."

--------

There was a loud, dissonant sound as the statues around them awakened. Kain cast the Mind effigies to occupy the golems –

And the split second it took him to do so nearly cost him much: for whilst he cast the spell, the Hylden commander raised a Glyph shield not unlike that of his sister, one which, until dispelled or expired, would render him nearly impervious to the hits of the Reaver.

But it was clear that, unlike Sakhmet, her brother was as much a consummate fighter as he was a sorcerer. As soon as he was safe behind his shield, he unleashed a furious volley of attacks at Kain, nearly unerringly homing on any opening he espied in the vampire lord's defence. His attacks, Kain swiftly dodged and more than matched with his own – but Yarovit did not even bother to block the incoming strikes: they were all caught on the Hylden's shield.

The vampire lord had just dodged a diagonal cut which otherwise would have surely severed his left wing from his torso; and then parried immediately the cut at his waist; but then, warned by his instinct, faster than conscious thought, immediately moved again. Forward and to the right – with a backhand strike at neck level, caught by the shield, as all his attacks had been caught; but that was now of secondary importance.

Had he not followed his impulse, he would have been nearly cut in twain. In the precious seconds he had spent defending himself from the Hylden's initial onslaught, the golems had dealt with the Mind effigies – and now they arrived to help their master.

--------

There were no cries of the dying in this fight; no sweet scent of his enemies' fear and spilt blood; there was only the flurry of the Hylden's attacks on one side and the slow, but steady, press of the golems on the other; and in the middle, he – fighting the losing fight.

Because he _was_ losing this fight. For the meantime, he could not break Yarovit's Glyph shield, though he constantly tested it, with magic, telekinesis, and his sword; and as for the golems –

When it happened, it took him by surprise; although perhaps it should not have. It took only several well-timed, well-aimed cuts to damage severely enough the first of the golems: the one that had first attacked him. The statue exploded, as it should have (he immediately used the opportunity to attack the Hylden, but his opponent's shield was as strong as ever in spite of the thousand fragments hitting it). But the energy which powered the statue did not dissipate, as _it_ should have. Instead, it flowed to the towering contraption in the corner; a deafening shriek was heard, and a moment later (a moment which, nevertheless, accommodated a whole series of cuts and parries) a new golem, twin to the one he had just destroyed, appeared to join the fray. And he suspected – and his suspicion was soon confirmed – that whatever other golems he destroyed would be likewise replaced –

The Hylden had managed to repair one of Malek's devices (a distant part of his mind amended: _not_ Malek's; the Paladin must have purloined the golem generators with the rest of the Bastion)._ This _was how they had awakened the golems which had defeated the demons. To eliminate the golems from this fight, to _win_ this fight, he would have to destroy this contraption; or, at the very least, its energy source –

And he would have to do it fast: the understanding came late, almost too late: his strength was leaving him, seeping out of him as surely as it would seep out of a damaged golem. The entire mêlée had not yet lasted ten minutes, but already he had sustained many wounds; some of them, deep. His immortal flesh had closed them almost instantly, of course – but that had taken much of his strength; strength which his tenuous link with the Pillars simply could not replace fast enough –

He leapt on top of the boulder which lay at the centre of the room, expecting his Hylden enemy to go after him, to try to push him back amidst the vicious statues, as had already happened once or twice before –

– Except that Yarovit did _not_ follow. Instead, the Hylden – laughed.

"Well met and well fought, Kain! I go now: my spell is almost over, and I would rather not meet your blade without it... But I _do_ wonder, vampire – whence will you draw the blood you need before the _third_ round comes?"

The Hylden's Glyph shield was, indeed, disappearing – but Kain did not leave his current stand: already did he catch sight of the dazzlingly bright green of the teleportation spell. Even he would not have managed to get to Yarovit in time...

The creature's parting words were correct: there would be a third round to this fight.

--------

Once the Hylden abandoned the battle ground, the rest of the fight became absurdly easy; from the boulder, he had a clear shot at the globe of energy powering the contraption which spawned the golems –

Then, it was a matter of chipping off pieces.

--------

He surveyed the grim green-and-black landscape of the outside of what for him was still Malek's Bastion – for although he had learnt much in this place: not all of what he had intended to learn, and a lot of what he had no intention to learn, but certainly _much_ – he did not yet have a different name for it...

--------

_Maat'ash'Eirene, it appeared, was the daughter of the Hylden Seer whom I first met far away from these frozen lands; near Meridian, in the south of Nosgoth. The Hylden commander declared her a traitor to her race; and though, in the end, she may have turned out to be one, it was certainly not through the deeds for which he condemned her._

_At the time when the Pillars were raised, and the Hylden banished, the Seer – Maat – was suffering her own punishment, secluded from nearly all in the Eternal Prison, a construct of her own kindred, but at that time already in vampires' hands. From that place, she was rescued by the fledgling Vorador, at no small price: for he demanded that she depose the greater part of her powers in his hands. And thus, Vorador, one of the very few amongst vampires – at least before the coming of the brood of my son Rahab – became immune to the destructive power of that which my kind has always feared the most: water. But for that – and for his stolen mastery of Earth magic – Vorador paid a dire price: Maat's blood twisted his visage into one akin to her own kind; the mark of his avarice, out for all vampire and human to see._

_All this, I have learnt from the Seer herself during our last palaver. And more: for before she died, Maat granted me the promise of one more gift of knowledge which her blood carried: a promise proven true when I sought out and defeated Vorador. By that time, the old fool had rebelled against my will, refusing me that for which I had restored him from beyond the grave: army, loyal to none but me. Yet that which he denied me in life, he gladly supplied in death –_

_And thus were my Lieutenants, Raziel the foremost of them, born._

--------

He sheathed the Reaver – not quite aware that he had drawn it in the first place – with a single, decisive move. He had lingered in this ancient ruin long enough; it was time for him to end his matters here, and return to the sublunar world.

The Hylden would probably await him in the southeast tower. But he would think him to arrive weak and half-crazed owing to the lack of warm blood, the lack of prey in these parts –

_How he would be mistaken._ He laughed dryly; it took only a short, brusque move of his hand to set fire to the several wooden boards which barred his way into the last still-standing tower of the Bastion.

--------

Another labyrinth painted in red-veined obsidian and venomous green. Again the piles of bodies; again the golems patrolling the ruins –

This time, he had entered the tower almost at ground level and moved upwards through the dark galleries and staircases; as before – as _always_ before – destroying all that stood in his way. The last obstacle took the form of a simple, unadorned door. He opened it casually –

And then immediately cast his Dimension spell to move near his enemy. As before, Yarovit's reflexes were very nearly perfect, very nearly vampiric in quality: with one hand, he was already moving to cast some arcane spell – perhaps that irksome Glyph shield; with the other, he had already half-drawn his sword from its scabbard. But _nearly_ was in this case _not nearly enough_: the next moment, both of the Hylden's hands were lying on the ground, and blood rushed copiously from the creature's stumps into a large puddle under Kain's feet.

"It appears that the third round is over," he remarked casually, scanning the room. It wasn't large, and lit only by the green glow of the Ward Shield coming through the narrow lancet windows. The majority of the floor was taken by another strange contraption; this time, of unmistakably Hylden origin. Its angular shapes and antiseptic white stood in stark contrast against the ruined, black walls of the Bastion; small green sparks shoot from it once in a while. He assumed that this was the Shield generator he needed to deactivate to leave this place.

"You have – survived?" There was now no trace of arrogance, only pure, unadulterated fear, in Yarovit's voice as the Hylden added, "Without – without blood? _How_?"

"You will not live long enough to possibly avail yourself of this knowledge," Kain answered, savouring the scent of terror in the cold, northern air. "Suffice it to say that you were in possession of – _outdated_ – information. On more than _one_ subject."

The creature moved in alarm. "What? What do you mean?"

"The survivors from the fight that you sent away from this place were hunted down and destroyed to a man. Not by me," he laughed, "but by the demons you had thought vanquished. Your siblings' armies have been likewise decimated by the Pillars; even now, your brother tries in vain to reach you at this place. _Why?_ Surely not to aid a fool who would fight _me_ alone –"

There was a sudden understanding in Yarovit's eyes. "Eirene..."

"Eirene," Kain repeated, disgusted. "Yes, I thought _this_ would be your answer. You speak of little else, after all –"

"Eirene," he repeated again, this time more to himself than to the Hylden, "She foresaw my defeat, did she not? But not at _your_ hand, princeling."

There was a movement, so brief that it was almost only a notion of itself –

Yarovit was now on his knees before him; the Reaver was buried up to the hilt in the creature's throat.

"Vae victis!" he laughed; the Reaver screamed accord as it devoured the Hylden prince's soul.

--------

There was an odd, chatoyant gem on Yarovit's body, resembling that which he had garnered in the Razielim abode. He added it to his previous trophy, and then turned to the Hylden Shield generator. Now, that he could examine it in detail, he saw that it was a complex arrangement of several batteries and control panels; he remembered having seen similar designs many times before, in the Hylden City, far across the sea.

After several attempts, he managed to find the combination of controls which turned the Shield off; the room grew immediately much darker without the green radiance. Then, he destroyed the control panel: he'd rather no one could activate the Shield again – at least, not without difficulty. He did not expect to be forced to return to the ruins of the Bastion; but he preferred to keep all his options open.

There was a part of the ceiling which almost pulverised after he cast a telekinetic bolt at it. Through the opening, he flew back out into the cold air; once outside, he settled on the tower's roof –

"_Zosha_," he called out into the night.

The reply came quickly, strong and sure, "My Lord?"

"Report."

"We have regained control of the Citadel and captured the enemy camp east of the city. The troops are now heading towards the Ash Village."

"Contact me immediately once you destroy the Ward Shield."

"My Lord." He could almost hear in her voice that small bow of obedience with which she had previously acknowledged his orders.

He came up to the battlement which crowned the tower, and looked at the horizon through one of the crenellations –

The Nosgoth which came to his view was bathed in blood: dawn was breaking out in the eastern sky, and it painted the world below him, hidden from his eyes as it was by the thick smoke cover, the deepest shade of incarnadine red.

--------

_The night of remembrances was over; a new day was come. My first step throughout it seemed obvious: I would confront Perun, the last Hylden prince with pretences to my throne, as soon as Zosha's humans broke through the Ward Shield which protected the Hylden encampment._

_But I was forced to alter my plans sooner than I expected – for it was at that very moment, even as I stood amidst the ruins of Malek's Bastion, that I suddenly felt a sentiment I had not experienced for millennia –_

_Dread: the Pillars of Nosgoth were in peril._


	7. Epicentre

**Chapter 6**

**Epicentre**

_The Pillars were in danger._

The foreboding premonition grew stronger every second as he flew south towards the Pillars. But it was only when he approached the Abyss that he received the first concrete clue as to the nature of the threat: the waters were agitated, stirred up in a thousand eddies on the surface of the swirling maelstrom; there was a deep, rumbling sound in the air, one not overshadowed even by the angry roar of water. He looked before himself, to the south –

The land _moved_. The entire southern part of Nosgoth, as far away as the horizon, was quivering and trembling in the throes of a massive earthquake.

He knew where to search for its epicentre: in the fallen Sanctuary, at the Pillars' platform.

--------

Through the heavy cerulean mist of stagnant energy surrounding the Pillars, he could see an enormous rip in the ground, a fissure whose course crossed the Pillars' platform, northwest-to-southeast, on one side disappearing beneath the dais between the pristine, immaculate white of the healed Pillar of Dimension and the ugly, rotten stump of the Pillar of Conflict; on the other side, reappearing to the right of the small steps which led to the platform. The platform itself stood untouched, the arcane magic of its creation still able to protect it from such a mundane force, however powerful – but the split was widening; the soil and the shattered tiles and all the evidence of the recent fights – carcasses, some several days old, some fresher than that – were falling into the darkness of the two deep cracks which had formed at the foot of the platform. The demons to whom he had been forced to concede this ground the day before were all gone.

Squatting by the gap near the stairs, he could see the promise of a giant cave, a subterranean chamber hidden under a thin layer of earth. Smiling grimly, he leapt into the cleft, already wide enough to admit him passage.

Slowly, stealthily, hardly making a single sound, he descended; debris and rubble was falling all around him. He strained to listen what sounds it made – the dull sound of hitting a firm surface, or perchance a splash on falling into water – but all was lost in the deep rumble of the tortured earth.

But even that sound was quiet next to the deafening voice which he now heard in his mind –

"_Kain_. We meet again."

And then, he finally saw that which he sought. In the two shafts of the weak, dull light coming from the gaps, now far above, he saw below him a platform surrounded by water – judging by appearance, twin in size to the one above him, with arcane symbols of the Pillars and the Elements engraved on its surface, most obscured at least in part by the fallen debris. Around him, there was the faint suggestion of walls – which may have once been adorned with murals; with two niches which once may have been side passages, but now had been apparently long caved in. There were the three restored Pillars – and, rising from the water, coiled around the Pillars, as though holding them in a lover's embrace, the _tentacles_.

"Yes," he replied dryly, settling on the platform, on the large sigil of the Spirit which occupied its centre. "We do. I see, false God, that you have forgotten my advice."

"The advice of a fool still unaware that he had already lost the game," answered from the abysmal depths below the voice of the self-proclaimed hub of the Wheel of Fate; another spasm tore through the ground; another deep rumble underscored the creature's words. "But a century ago, you might yet have had a chance to turn Nosgoth your way, Kain – but not _now_. Now –"

"Now, cherish the last remnants of your powers, _demon_," he spat out. "I know you for what you are, fraud; as soon will know all Nosgoth. Before long, your lies will find none willing to heed them."

The Elder One replied in an almost condescending tone, "You delude yourself if you think I will ever find myself in need of servants, Kain. What can _you_ offer to your disciples? Only death, or the torment of undeath; whilst _I_ rule over true death and true life. You and I both know well the puny hearts of mortals: when I offer to resurrect their fallen, none will hesitate to betray your forfeit cause."

Feigning disbelief, he leisurely eyed the tentacles up and down, "And to prove your point, you will allow souls to escape your precious Wheel? Good. The more witnesses there will be to your fall."

It appeared that the taunt hit its target. "I may choose to curb my appetite... for the time being. After all –" the voice suddenly regained its previous patronising tone – "_you_ cater to my needs more than well enough. You do know that, Scion of Balance, do you not? Even the wretch your creation did. Even now, as you yearn to destroy me, each time you kill, each time your blade reaves the souls of mortals, you nourish _me_." Now, the scorn in the creature's voice was unmistakable.

Somehow, someway, the Soul Reaver had already found its way into his hands, as it always had when some fool had tested the patience of the Emperor of Nosgoth. "Very well, demon," he countered, "Shall we see how nourished you will be when I feed you your own soul?"

He struck, cutting off in one swift move both the tentacle coiled around the Pillar of Balance and its sister which had been strangling the Pillar of Dimension. The severed appendages fell to the platform, smearing it gratuitously with the green, unctuous blood. He was by the Pillar of Mind even before they hit the floor; but the third tentacle was already uncoiled from the Pillar and sliding back into the water, splashing it around; some droplets fell on his skin, burning into it. And at this very moment the deep, rumbling sound, the scream of Nosgoth's very soil, returned, and even louder than before; and so did the tremors, likewise amplified in intensity. This was, apparently, the Elder One's only answer to his challenge.

He sheathed the Reaver and looked up, assessing the situation. Any minute now, and the Pillar platform above him would lose whatever support it still had; and then –

--------

_Having fled back to the putrid depths which housed him, my enemy resumed his assault on the Pillars' integrity. Secured within these waters as he was, he was beyond my reach; whatever might or magic he employed, I was nigh powerless to counteract it._

_The Pillars' only salvation lay within themselves: within the ancient magic which aligned them with the elemental principles of Nosgoth. If balance was to return to Earth and the tremors stopped, that sublime union between the aspect and its associated Pillars had to be restored._

--------

There wasn't even the slightest remainder of the corrupt Pillars in the underground chamber; in the spots where they should have emerged from the platform, its surface was smooth, glabrous and unbroken, as though the magic of this place had prevented at least this damage to its integrity. But when, heedless to the growing chaos of the tremors and the noise and the debris falling into the cavern, he approached slowly the sigil of Earth engraved in front and slightly to the right of the Pillar of Balance, he felt it again – that faint sensation at the very edge of his awareness, a single note resonating in perfect accord with some sentiment, some power, some feeling deep within his soul –

This time, he did not even have to perform any bodily action: he _willed_ the Pillars of Energy and Time be restored, and the Pillars obeyed his will: the will of the Scion of Balance, the bearer of the Soul Reaver and the last one who could lay a rightful claim to them –

Two pristine white columns materialised in front of him out of the air; the tremors around him abruptly came to a halt; all was again silent – then the silence was broken, as, from the depths below the platform, came the single, sudden scream of anguish of the one whose plans were now thwarted – and then the cry of despair broke, and the deafening silence reigned again; the last bits of debris fell from the above; the last specks of dust danced in the two wide streams of light coming from the above; but he was oblivious to it all.

The terrible, magnificent power of the Change hit him in full up front, washing all around him, taking him with itself; he almost could not bear it, could not withstand its intensity; forced to his knees, for a moment he even tried to close his eyes, to shield them with his hand; but found that he could not; degraded to the position of the impotent witness, he could but watch – he _had_ to watch – as the Pillars affected the whole realm, and him in it –

And then, it was all over; his awareness of the outside world slowly returned, and the only thing which remained of that brief moment were the new powers which he even now felt cruise in his veins.

Outside, above, the demons awaited; he had no way to tell this – for his sensitive ears did not catch even the slightest wisp of sound in this utter silence; but he knew this with a terrible certainty, as surely as he would have known this if he had seen it in one of the Chronoplast portals. And these would not be those pitiful, pedestrian hellfire-red and lightning-blue and poison-green demons which had been assailing him ever since he set foot in this Nosgoth – and before, in Avernus and the Citadel of Tears; these would be the gigantic jet-black demons the likes of which he had fought only once in the course of his long existence; sent here to face him – and fail against him – by the fury of his now twice-vanquished enemy. He smiled to himself an unpleasant, private smile; he was eager to test his new powers upon these fiends.

He shot back outside from the darkness of the chamber as rapidly as his wings could carry him; even so, he barely managed to evade the fire the demons spewed out at him the moment they spotted him.

--------

The demons _were_ fast, that much he would grant them; as with all demons, their massive bodies hinted at some innate slowness – but from experience, he knew this was an utterly misleading impression. Even so, he hardly expected that which was to come.

He had just dodged the crossfire of the fiery breaths of the two demons which awaited him near the egress from the underworld when he spotted three telekinetic projectiles coming his way from three different directions. He tried to fly up and away from their path, then to alter his position quickly, randomly – but the bolts always changed their trajectories accordingly, unerringly homing on him. Meanwhile, one of the two nearest demons was already spewing another fiery breath towards him, while the other straightened fully up – it actually appeared to grow and swell somewhat in the process – and tried to catch him in its mammoth claws; all the while the bolts still followed –

Instead of releasing his Mind projections to divert the projectiles and disorient his opponents, he reached to the forces of Energy. Immediately, he was surrounded on all sides by a shield of fulgent, white light; one of the projectiles struck the shield –

And passed through it, hitting him hard just below his left clavicle; he hissed, partly from pain, partly in disbelief at the shield's ineffectiveness. But as he lurched sideways in a frantic – and failed – attempt to avoid the other two projectiles (at the same time striking with the Reaver the extended claw of the demon which attempted to engage him in mêlée fight), he saw in the distance a peculiar sight: as the two projectiles hit him in turn – one in the left foot, the other in the tip of the left wing – two fiends in the distance growled and bent double in pain. Apparently, in the end the Energy shield was effective, if its effect was different from what he had expected: the projectiles did hit him and harm him – but the majority of the damage was reflected back to those who had cast them.

But the Energy shield soon disappeared, while the demons remained – and all those that had chosen not to attack him while the spell had lasted were still unharmed. He could use his already familiar Dimension powers next; instead, he called to the newfound forces of Time. This time, the effect was just as he had anticipated: the movements of the fiends, the fire disgorged by the grotesque lips, the telekinetic bolts – they all slowed down nearly to a halt as he slowed his enemies' time.

Fighting the horde of demons now became easy; almost as easy as fighting humans. He moved effortlessly between the colossal, almost immobilised bodies of his opponents, efficiently distributing blows, so that he would hit the critical spots; letting the Reaver feast on the creatures' souls. Whatever projectiles the demons still managed to throw at him, he caught on the Energy shield; they stung, but hurt him little; and in return, he was afforded the delightful view of the malformed visages as the creatures realised that their own weapons were now used against them –

--------

The fight was over. He settled on the edge of the Pillars' platform, pausing for a moment to take a quick look at the surroundings. A steady trickle of the green demon blood flowed from a nearby body into the depths of the cavern below; the whole carcass soon followed as he kicked it off the platform. All around the podium, a new layer of corpses was added to the previous piles –

And, in the middle of all this filth and the sweet stench of the decomposing bodies, the five Pillars now stood proudly, tall and immaculate; perfect. With the restoration of the Pillar of Energy, the dark blue mist around the Pillars disappeared; he sensed that so did the erratic stagnant pools of energy which until this point had at times given him sustenance: the universal flow of power within the realm was restored, and they had been absorbed into it. But the loss of the pools did not overly concern him: because in return, his innate healing powers had increased slightly. Already could he feel how, through the symbiotic link which joined him with the Pillars, they used the forces of the land to heal the wounds his body had sustained in the fight – not yet as speedily as they had in the epoch whence he had come to this Nosgoth; but almost. That would still improve once more Pillars were healed.

_But, _he suddenly realised,_ this will have to wait for another time_. A different matter would soon demand his attention –

"_My Lord Kain?"_ The Whisper of the human's mind was hesitant, as though, despite his clear orders, she was still unsure if she could interrupt him.

"Zosha." He already knew what the gist of the human's message would be; she wouldn't have dared contact him on a non-essential matter. Still –

"The Ward Shield is down."

"I will enter the Ash Village from the east. We shall meet within."


	8. The Garden of Mirrors

**Chapter 7**

**The Garden of Mirrors**

_The Ash Village. Once the abode of my proud son Dumah and his Clan, after their demise converted into a human settlement, it now housed a Hylden army under the command of Perun – the last of the triumvirate of generals whom Maat'ash'Eirene had prophesied to be my fall._

_But even if no prophecy had set us against each other, the Hylden and I would meet. For Perun stood in my way to Nosgoth; as I stood in his._

**-------**

He studied the snow-covered courtyard through the gap in the wall. Less than a full day and night had passed since he had sworn to himself to return to this place. Then, he had only just come to this land; ignorant of his enemies' forces, nearly drained of his powers by the corrupt Pillars, with the Soul Reaver as his only asset.

But much had changed in this day and night. Now, five Pillars were healed; and now, he had names to follow: Eirene, daughter of Maat, and Perun, his quarry in the Village; and he even had some tentative allies –

_Allies_. He tasted the word: as always, it had for him only the sour, sharp tang of betrayal.

**-------**

The Ash Village under the reign of the Dumahim had been a residence of steel and sandstone; over the century when it had been occupied by human settlers, they had restructured many hallways of this place, putting up partitions to divide them into smaller rooms – perhaps in an effort to bring them down to a shape and size which their puny minds would find bearable; in the process, they had torn off much of the precious metal and replaced it with the cheaper brick and glass. The Hylden warriors had not been in the Village long, but they, too, had already left their mark on this place: some of the walls – both the original walls and the human-put partitions – had holes blasted into them, to make the place more accessible, and less of a labyrinth; pieces of brick, stone and glass at times still littered the floor around such openings. Here and there stood contraptions and devices alien to him in shape and purpose; white cables run up and down all over the walls and ceiling, as if they were the veins of some giant organism.

The end result was a haphazard mix, a bastard of architecture, atrocious to behold by any but the most vulgar eyes; it fit perfectly in Nosgoth.

**-------**

A large, grey wolf trotted down the corridors of the Village. The bulk of the Hylden contingent must have been tied in fight with the human attackers in the western part of the settlement; it was in this direction – in the direction of the battle-screams and the dispatches of gunfire – that the wolf was now heading. The wolf left behind a trail of dead Hylden guards; most with torn throats, but some with wounds which could not have been possibly caused by any wolf's claws or fangs.

The world held only shades of grey for the wolf – not that it mattered much, as there was very little in this world which was not grey; but the smells caught by the wolf's sensitive nose were very much amplified in intensity next to what a human – perhaps even next to what a vampire in his usual state – would feel. Smells had grain and texture and undertones for the wolf; due to some odd synaesthesia, he also saw them at times as coloured mist painted on top of the achromatic world; and sometimes heard them as sounds; each smell a different colour or note. Currently, the wolf was following the trail of emerald mist (curious how, whatever his form, he would always associate the colour with the Hylden) up its gradient of intensity as much as he was following the ever-louder sounds of battle.

At last, the wolf came to a place where there was a newly-created opening in the floor. The emerald mist was much thicker, fresher here, and with hints of the incarnadine colour-smell of blood; down there, there would be five or six enemies all in one place. The wolf leapt down into the darkness –

This place was clearly some sort of infirmary for the Hylden soldiers wounded in the battle. There were several of them, just as he had smelled from the above. Each lay, bathed in his personal aura of green-and-red scent, on a makeshift cot made of tattered rags – probably garnered from the human dwellings about the Village; each was attached to another of those strange, pure-white contraptions, so bizarrely incongruous in this place.

They offered little resistance as he finished them off, one by one.

**-------**

The bare walls of the next room – like those of the provisional sickbay – were made of brick: human-built. There was a small window here, next to a large piece of dirty, tattered cloth hanging in the door opening; through the window entered into the room streams of the dim, dirty light of the Village; and also the sounds of a battle in progress – in stark contrast with the muted light, now unbelievably, almost unbearably loud to the wolf's ears.

He shifted into his true form – the racket abruptly decreased to an almost manageable level – and came up to the window to look at the street outside.

It was as if he found himself at the bottom of a deep well, an artificial couloir: the place was dark, and narrow; not ten steps from him were the wall and the door and the windows of another human-built, ramshackle brick building. There was a crowd of Hylden soldiers in the brief narrow space in between the houses, some entering the building on the other side of the street; some leaving it; some passing beside it.

He retraced in his mind the path he had taken through the Village, and compared it to what he had remembered of the Village of long ago –

He had last seen this place when he had come to warn Dumah of the impending strike of the human forces: a strike to which he had consented when the Priestess of the time had informed him that the toll of supporting that many Clans had been simply too heavy on the population of the Citadel; a strike which he had foreseen many times before in the Chronoplast portals. Then, his son had cast him out, of course; such had been Dumah's fate, to think himself greater than his father; to become the fool and the laugh of Nosgoth; to fall at humans' hands, and to be released only to fall again.

– There had been two courtyards on the western side of the abode at that time. He should be near the inner one now, the one which used to lead to Dumah's own throne room –

He tore off the curtain in the door and walked out into the light of the street outside.

**-------**

The Hylden soldiers, of course, attacked him as soon as they noticed him; as soon as they saw that he was not one of their own accursed kindred.

He unsheathed the Reaver and, reversing the grip, drove it forcefully between the broken stone tiles on the floor –

The arcane magic of the blade generated a powerful earthquake, a shock wave which knocked the enemy warriors off their feet, and sent them reeling into the air; and then, given the narrow space, into the walls of the buildings and on top of one another. Some of the soldiers were still shooting as they were carried through the air; the dispatches from their Glyph rifles were suddenly travelling at odd angles, sometimes, often enough, hitting the other Hylden soldiers. Some bolts were headed his way; to protect himself – and add to the pandemonium – he activated his Energy shield. What wounds he received still stung, but not too much.

But this, he did instinctively, automatically; his attention was occupied elsewhere. To the left of the house from which he had emerged, the narrow street widened into a small square; the original stone walls were still visible there – the original walls of the inner western courtyard of the Village; for this was where he now found himself. There, on the steps which led to an odd, tall building with heavy double door – which he did not remember, and which, his memories told him, was standing precisely where Dumah's audience chamber, the chamber where his son had rejected his warning, used to be – there was a great mass of Hylden soldiers, milling about like the insects they resembled; and among them, one was much different from all the others: taller and much more deformed and with an aura of authority and power; the one in command.

And that one: _Perun_ – was now looking straight at him; then, there was a brief moment of recognition, when neither of them would first avert his eyes –

He nearly paid a dear price for his momentary lack of concentration. It was only pain which brought him back from his reverie: his shield extinguished itself, and his right wing was hit from the behind with the full power of a Glyph bolt. And just in time: some Hylden warrior was apparently about to try and impale him on his lance. He snarled in the creature's face: the Hylden suddenly changed his mind, and ran away, heading right, for the far end of the narrow street – the place where, by the sound of it, was the bottleneck for whose control the Hylden and human troops now fought.

He paid the coward no heed; he snapped back his head to the Hylden mass to his left.

Perun was gone.

**-------**

The Earth spell proved its value again. Once more, masses of Hylden soldiers were sent hurling through the air, to the left and to the right, leaving a clear path for him in the middle. This time, he did not even stop to finish them all off. They were inconsequential; for all he cared, the _humans_ could have them. And for all he knew, they would: there was a somewhat different quality to the sounds coming from behind him: as if the stalemate had been broken, and either party – the humans, most probably, given that the Hylden commander had abandoned his post – had been in attack.

He had no rational reason not to consider the option that Perun had escaped the Village altogether, teleporting out to some distant Hylden camp; but his instinct told him that it was not so. No; somehow, the alternative seemed more probable –

He closed the heavy double door behind himself – they were metal, he noticed: a rarity in this place of scraps and leftovers. He did not really believe that any of the foot soldiers would dare come after him – after _them_ – into this place; still, there was no need to invite them. He was likely to encounter some resistance anyway.

After all, if escape were not Perun's plan, the Hylden commander would most likely try to lead him into a trap.

**-------**

There was another set of heavy doors at the end of the short, dark corridor; and then –

**-------**

_Of all the sights in this fallen land, this one was perhaps the most disheartening: an illusion of Eden, wrought by the artificer's cunning scheme._

_In a land where Nature herself is corrupt, only a falsehood can yield the semblance of natural design._

**-------**

It was a garden.

The air was much warmer here than it was outside, where snow would still lay if it had not been trampled with dirt into a kind of unsavoury sludge by the feet of the many Hylden who had walked over it. The light was much different, too: neither dim nor weak, it was the soft, diffused, slightly yellow light of late summer of Nosgoth. There were some trees nearby, just to his right: they were only small, misshapen pine-trees, and their needles were not even green, but somewhat rusty in colour; and they were shorter than what he had remembered pine-needles to be. But they were trees, something which he had not expected to find in this land where all plants were black as tar; and he saw that there were more, and other kinds of trees in the distance, across the small lake.

In front of him, sloping gently down towards the lake, there was a small meadow: a bit of grass, with patches of flowers interspersed throughout it. There were some insects flying around the flowers.

There was a waterfall; and a thin film of mist where the falling water hit the surface of the pond. The sound of water and the buzzing of insects was all that he could hear; what battle still took place outside, all its noises were drowned out by the silence.

The absurdity of this place was simply astounding.

It was a garden under a roof, in the middle of a city, lit by artificial light – although not _only_ artificial, he corrected himself when he finally comprehended what the mirrors were intended for – and artificially heated. In its own way, it was as perverse as the rest of Nosgoth.

It was a mute accusation shouted out at him at top voice; one even worse for being completely unintentional.

**-------**

The mirrors were everywhere: large and small, flat, convex and concave; set up in some abstract constellation unfathomable to the uninitiated, they gathered, reflected and dispersed light around the garden. As he passed by them, following the single trail which led from the entrance to the garden towards the lake, each one in turn showed his reflection, some faithful and other, deformed; he wondered if they would show also the reflections of his Mind effigies. If so, they could serve him even better in the coming fight.

**-------**

At last, when it became obvious to him that this time, his Hylden enemy would not speak out to him first, he called out into the almost-silence of the warm summer afternoon:

"I am here, Perun, as Eirene foretold! You knew this day would come, yet it seems you are still afraid. Do you seek to escape your destiny? Come, Hylden, fight me - or would you rather I came and dug you out of the hole you cower in?"

For a moment, there was no response; but then, a ripple moved through the surface of water, and then up the waterfall; the mists around the waterfall started to coalesce rapidly into a humanoid shape. A rather unsettling development: he had never witnessed such power of the States manifest in one who had not been vampire; and, beside Kain himself, a vampire of Vorador's stock, at that –

Even fully incarnate, it was as though Perun were missing a certain peculiar aspect of solidity – firmness – from his armour and body: they seemed liquid and mutable, as though borne of nothing more substantial than emerald light, thin mist and the cascade's iridescent water. When the Hylden spoke out, his voice too had an eerie, fluctuating quality, now louder, and then growing weaker again:

"To escape destiny – as your slayer and successor? Even if I _wished_ to, we both know I cannot. One does not cheat his fate in Nosgoth; it was perhaps your kindred's first and greatest crime to ensure this. It is fitting punishment, cursed ones, that now, however you will it, you cannot unmake your own!"

Kain smirked, and, taking the Reaver off his back, countered, "I already _have _defied my stars, Hylden. It is _you_ who will die here today; and before you do, know this and _suffer_ in this knowledge: whilst _you_ must still obey the curse of _my_ kindred, _my_ kin is free of yours. Your game is forfeit; a cure was found to the incurable; the madness to which you have condemned us afflicts vampires no more."

The Hylden replied incredulously, "Only a _vampire_ could have tasted _immortality_ and then endeavour to seek cure for it; what a glorious brand of madness of its own! And if you have found the cure, it is unsurprising that we have encountered so few of you here –"

Perun was still speaking; yet Kain heard him no more.

A part of his mind wondered briefly if it was possible that the Hylden was lying, either because he had been himself misled, or in an attempt to mislead Kain. But he soon recalled what little he had learnt about his vampire ancestors from his journey into Nosgoth's past; about them, and about the creature which they had worshipped, and what it claimed to be and do –

No, he decided; Perun was _not_ lying; on the contrary, the Hylden had unwittingly supplied him with an important piece of truth; of the magnificent, awful puzzle that was Nosgoth.

Another part wondered how he could himself possibly overlook so important an implication; and how many more such revelations were still to come; how much more he did not yet know, and how much more of that which he _should_ already know he had overlooked. He closed off this train of thought quickly; it was futile to think of these things, for now.

A small, nagging part wanted to know if Raziel had known this truth – but he must; he _must_. Another part concentrated on what the repercussions for _him_ could be: what of his status as the Scion of Balance; what of his symbiotic link with the Pillars? He did not know.

But it was something far simpler than all these questions that occupied the majority of his thoughts; a cognitive dissonance far more instinctive – far more _visceral_ – in origin.

Vampires were immortal. They simply _were_; it was one of their defining features. The bloodlust – he had learnt long ago, perhaps in Meridian, or perhaps before – was the result of a curse which they had suffered, as a species, at the hands of their ancient enemies. But their immortality –

Their immortality was –

– was an effect of the same curse.

It was useless to fight the truth. He had learnt that lesson millennia ago.

**-------**

"Indeed, between you and the Audron –"

Kain startled out of his reverie. "_Audron_? So – Janos is still alive."

The Hylden laughed; it was a bitter, mirthless laugh. "Yes, he still _lives_. How could he _not_, without the _cure_ you speak of? _We_ certainly had no intention to let him rejoin your _god_." The last word was nearly spat out; the Hylden evidently shared Kain's own sentiment regarding the Wheel of Fate. "Of course, now that we have returned to Nosgoth, and without his aid –"

"Where do you keep him?"

A deceptively simple question; one that he did not expect even the Hylden fool to answer –

"_Where_? He is with the half-sister, secure in Avici, in the land of shadow. I see you already have two pieces of the sigil – having no doubt murdered my sister and brother. And _here_ is the _third_ fragment – _catch_!"

**-------**

As the gem moved rapidly towards him, propelled by the force of the Hylden's telekinetic powers, he saw that it was colourless and translucent, as though it had been nothing more special than a piece of carbon, an ordinary diamond; but he did not have the time to do anything save register its appearance, to react to whatever trap the Hylden was leading him into; because the trap was already sprung and already working. When the gem found itself in the presence of its brothers, the three pieces of the – seal, if the Hylden was not lying on _that_ matter – began to move towards one another, pulled together by some unseen force; and when they finally touched –

He was left wondering why he had not felt _anything at all_.

When the pieces of the seal had finally touched, they had erupted with emerald light: pure Glyph magic, perhaps not concentrated enough to harm a Hylden or a human, but certainly enough to cause serious burns to a vampire –

He laughed as he finally understood; as he took to the air with a powerful stroke of his wings. For a moment, he hovered mid-air, presenting the Hylden with a clear view of the one gift which his race had irretrievably lost. "An old enemy of mine once told me that unless I mastered Time, it would master me –"

One more wing-stroke delivered him to the Hylden. "I _have_."

But Perun had already moved – impossibly fast in his own manner, like a water strider he skimmed the surface of water, stopping just out of the Reaver's reach. "My little trick has failed, I see; no matter. Your ancestors were correct in this one regard: Death is not of Earth, but of –"

"– _Water_." The last word was nearly unintelligible: nearly lost in the noise of a massive wave of water which tore off the surface of the waterfall and now headed quickly towards Kain. He evaded it – barely – by flying up, where it could not touch him; it crashed the shore with a thunderous roar, flooding a small part of the terrain; the next moment, the water moved back, leaving behind a patch of mud and mutilated, uprooted grass. From his position high above, he watched the spectacle; as soon as the wave passed by, he dove at Perun like a bird of prey, a raptor, gaining momentum and speed as he fell –

And very nearly did not manage to stop; almost one-third of the Reaver was submerged in water, and a long streak of parted waters trailed in the blade's wake, before Kain lost the momentum he had meant to spend on Perun, and could not: on seeing Kain approach, the Hylden had dissolved into mist –

Kain turned around – a thin spray of water droplets from the Reaver scattered around; some landed on his skin, and he hissed out in pain. The Hylden had apparently moved as far away from him as possible across the lake; the mists there were already coalescing into a more solid form –

Only to dissolve again as Kain sent in Perun's direction a volley of telekinetic projectiles. The spheres of compressed air passed harmlessly through the Hylden's gaseous body, and hit a tree on the other side of the lake, tearing it in half. The next moment, the mists thickened again –

Kain dodged effortlessly the water-bolt Perun sent towards him; but slowly, his unease was growing. It was clear that this first exchange had brought no resolve: he and his opponent could play this game of evading each other's projectiles and blows for quite a time. It was time to use his _other_ faculties.

The Dimension spell he dismissed outright: he could not yet control the power with the precision required to ensure that he would not end up half-submerged in water. The Energy shield was likewise useless if Perun were to continue casting water projectiles: water would not harm a Hylden, whilst he himself would still suffer. This left the Mind effigies and the Time spell as his only options –

_This_ time, he barely managed to duck. Apparently, Perun reached the same conclusion as Kain regarding the use of their powers: a single ray of lightning, fast and deadly, shot in Kain's direction. It hit the mirror behind Kain, and reflected off of it into the forest behind the waterfall; the tree it hit burst into flames. The next ray came soon after, unerringly homing on Kain –

He cast the Time spell. The lightning slowed down enough for him to move out of its way; he turned to Perun –

The Hylden had apparently already realised what was happening: however slowly, he had already started to assume his mist form. Kain sent towards him several telekinetic projectiles: from what he saw, one or two managed to hit their target before the Hylden's body grew too dissolute. Apart from the insignificant damage he managed to inflict through them, the spell had been wasted.

Perun returned to his more solid form only after time regained its normal pace for him; and only for a brief enough moment to discharge two other lethal rays, one after another, at Kain. The vampire lord managed to evade the first bolt – it hit another mirror, which promptly exploded – but that put him squarely in the path of the other one. He tried to use his own Mist form –

The lightning hit him, trapping him in a shining, radiant cage of pain; sparks ran up and down the length of his body, overloading his pain receptors and at the same time turning his muscles numb and unresponsive. For a moment, there was no thought, no feel, no emotion; only the pain –

Then, the spell released him – though not before it took the larger part of his strength; but for a moment longer, his muscles would not yet obey his will; he started to fall. He recovered control over them only just over the surface of water; just in time to see another lightning beam heading his way –

He slowed time without thinking, by instinct, faster, as always, than conscious thought. He managed to get away from the path of the lightning; once relatively safe, he turned to his opponent again; but Perun was again already half-mist.

At that moment, the lightning bolt hit another mirror; this time, however, the mirror did not explode, but deflected the lightning back over the lake –

**-------**

In the end, the task was neither as hard nor as easy as he had expected at various points of the fight. It _was_ pitifully easy to make the lightning rebound towards its author – Kain only had to cast several telekinetic projectiles, aiming them at carefully selected mirrors around the lake and garden. Perun, as it turned out, was _not_ immune to the effects of the lightning, and water was, of course, an excellent conductor.

But some of the mirrors, unable to bear the terrible strain, shattered when the lightning touched them; and so, the lightning which hit Perun was nowhere near as strong as the lightning with which Perun would have hit him; and, of course, the Hylden was much more careful with aiming the bolts after the first time. After several failed attempts to lure him into hitting another mirror, and several equally fruitless exchanges of the mundane telekinetic projectiles on one side and water projectiles and waves on the other – Kain was forced to accept the simple truth: to harm the Hylden, he would have to let himself be harmed in return.

The next time Perun sent out the lightning at him, Kain did not dodge it, but cast the Energy shield instead –

Again, there was only pain: the brilliant, excruciating, mind-numbing pain of agony, of Death in life.

**-------**

In retrospective, it was a good thing that he was over solid ground, and not water, when the lightning hit his shield.

He was not able to regain control over his body before it struck earth this time; if he had hit water –

Truthfully, he did not quite know what would _precisely_ have happened if he had hit water; but the outcome would be certainly even more severe than what _did_ in fact happen. He collapsed into a bloody, unseemly heap, every single cell of his body crying in pain as he felt life sapped from him and at the same time restored by his symbiotic link with the Pillars, only to be lost again the next moment with the blood he lost. His spell-casting powers were naught, having been drained out of him by the Hylden's spell together with his life force; his disoriented mind begged for the mercy of oblivion.

He raised himself slowly, gradually, from the ground; absent-mindedly, he noticed that did not even have the strength to lift the Reaver single-handedly. As he rose, he faced the lake: and, within the lake, the Hylden, still writhing in the throes of his own agony. Such an easy prey now – yet so far beyond his grasp! His wings would not listen to his mind's commands.

He did not have the power to cast a single spell; _what of the Hylden?_

He was left with only one option now; a dubious one, at best.

**-------**

The world turned into shades of grey – though there was a large incarnadine cloud all around him: his own blood; and another one far in front, where the Hylden was. The wolf stepped several steps back from the water to gain place for a running start. Then, he ran; and then, he _leapt_ –

Then, there was only a snap as the wolf's jaws closed on empty air; and then, there was only –

**-------**

– Darkness; and within the darkness, voices.

"Is he dead?" Female, somehow – _familiar_?

"Not yet." Male, but young and weak; childlike almost. "But it can easily be amended. Help me."

"What are you doing, Sava? _Leave_ that _sword_!" Brief scuffle; then, at last:

"_You_ have no power to command _me_, sister."

Exasperation – and yet concern, "None, save the one granted to me by Mother and the Council. But I will _not_ help you kill an ally."

Incredulity. "_Ally_? Is _that_ what you think he is? What have you become – what has he made you be – if you would consider _him_ and _his_ any allies of ours?"

"He has made me nothing that I was not before. _Look around!_ Think of the battle which must have taken place here. Do you really think either of us could have fought alone and win against such power?"

"Not _you_, perhaps. But _I_ am never alone: my God walks with me. He would aid me in my victory." Calm assurance.

"Your – _God_?" Disbelief.

"I have looked into the Abyss, sister. And it has looked into me; and I have found my God." Brief pause. "But perhaps I have spoken too much, too early; Mother must learn of our _illustrious_ victory here, and my troops need healing even if yours do not. With your _permission_, sister, I will leave you here to deal with your – ally."

Another pause.

"And while you wait for him to awaken, consider this – how possible it is that the _predator_ should wish to strike alliance with the _cattle_?"

**-------**

"It did happen once. The circumstances were similar."

Zosha was standing on the bank of the lake, turned away from him. On hearing him speak, she startled a bit, but when she turned to him, her face was again set into the emotionless mask she preferred to take on in his presence. She did not say anything.

He picked up the Soul Reaver, he must have dropped the blade when he hit the ground."You should have killed him. He will turn on you and on those who share your blood."

Her eyes narrowed briefly, and then she laughed a mirthless laugh. "He would have me help him kill _you_. And when I refused, he gave me the same warning."

"I know," he replied noncommittally. The garden still stretched all around him; but it looked much different now than it had before the fight. Large parts of the meadow near the shore had been destroyed by Perun's tidal waves; the uprooted grass and flowers were floating on the surface of the lake. Some of the trees were charred; others, still smouldering. Most of the mirrors which used to circulate and spread light were shattered; the garden now drowned in a gloom not unlike that which awaited him outside. The insects had hidden somewhere, and those which had not were probably dead; their incessant song had come to an end –

The garden now fit in with the rest of the village; with the rest of Nosgoth.

"What is this sword? He insisted that we use it."

He looked at the blade; then, he sheathed it. "The sword is the key to a lock; a lock that some are afraid to close; and others, to open. But that is _my_ concern, not _yours_. _Your_ debt is paid; you may consider all ties between us dissolved."

She protested, "_Dissolved_? But what of the –" she hesitated – "_Hylden_? And what of the –" she hesitated again; this time, it was obvious that she had a rather different word in mind – "_vampires_?"

"The Hylden will not trouble you anymore. As for the _vampires_ –"

And then, suddenly, he recalled the very first Hylden scouts whom he had seen in this land, just after he had come out of the Chronoplast caves: even those simpletons had been evidently surprised by the sight of a vampire –

_Was_ there – save him; and, apparently, Janos Audron – a single vampire still living in Nosgoth? Between Raziel's quest to avenge his ills and a century of human rule of the land; and the ongoing Hylden invasion –

The human watched him, clearly waiting for him to finish his speech; he did.

"In the end, what good is a predator who lets himself be defeated by cattle?"

**-------**

Zosha left; and he was alone in the silent garden. He looked at the triple sigil of the Hylden princes: it was a curious matter, shapeless and constantly morphing – it reminded him of Perun in that regard – and constantly glowing with the intense, vibrant emerald of pure Glyph energy –

**-------**

__

_Perun escaped; yet I knew that we would meet again – apparently, there did, indeed, exist a prophecy which bound us to each other. _

_I would not seek the Hylden, however; I knew that, if destiny willed it, we would meet again, regardless of our choices. Instead, I resolved to head for Avici, the place where Janos Audron was kept imprisoned within the realm of shadow. _

_I knew of only two places in Nosgoth where the boundaries between the two realms blurred and permitted passage. The first was artificial – a Gate, deep in the southern seas, which I had closed myself millennia ago. _

_The second was the birdless place. _

_Avernus. _

_My home._


	9. The Unrelenting

**Chapter 8**

**The Unrelenting**

Avernus gained its name – _the birdless place_ – when the humans who had settled in the ancient ruins noticed that no bird would enter them of its own volition; and that all the birds taken into the city perforce soon died of a variety of gruesome maladies. The people whispered that there was something in the city's air, some invisible agent of disease of which the human colonists were blissfully unaware, but which the delicate lungs of birds detected with fatal accuracy.

The people whispered that in Avernus was the entrance to hell.

The people were right.

--------

Even when he had not yet known what Avernus had been – even in the time when the Hylden had not yet existed for him, and Maat, the Seer, had been nothing but an old acquaintance of Vorador's who, he claimed, had been indebted to him and who, she claimed, had been gravely wronged by him – even in _that_ time, he had sensed some oddness in the place, some incongruity, some aberration which had set Avernus apart even in the aberrant land. This sensation, this _wrongness_ in the air had been, in fact, one of the reasons – if not _the_ reason – why, at the birth of the Empire, he had set aside Avernus for his own use: in the millennia to come, he would attempt to decipher the riddle; always in vain.

Now, that he did know what Avernus had once been, and now that his symbiotic link with the Pillars was stronger than it could have ever been before, he finally understood that which had previously escaped him. The _wrongness_ was in the _thinness_ – the barrier between realms was thinner here, almost nonexistent; Avernus was an open wound on the tissue of Nosgoth, one only barely, provisionally patched by the Pillars.

And so, it was in here, in Avernus, that he would search for his way back into the demon realm.

He was almost certain that he would not be able to use the portal through which he had returned to Nosgoth the previous time. Even if it had been a permanent passage – and he could not be even sure of that – it had been located deep in the catacombs of the great cathedral; and the cathedral, like the rest of the city, had been long gone. For the major part, it had been destroyed in the fire which had been ravaging Avernus as Raziel and he had fought Fate and one another; what little had remained had been cleared by the slaves in preparation for the setting of the foundations of his retreat.

_That _was a massive, six-tiered ziggurat; so large, it was easily visible to the sharp vampire eyes even from the Lake of the Dead and the Abyss; and, on a day when the smoke in Nosgoth's air thinned a bit (something which always used to make fledglings run about frantically in the search for cover, he remembered with a smirk), even from as far as the lands of the Melchiahim. It loomed on the eastern horizon, a dark tower of granite which had taken the slaves two centuries to complete – but, of all things, _time_ he had then had in abundance.

At the foot of the ziggurat, there used to be a village – a small town, really, which had served him as pantry. In the time of the Empire's decay, the hamlet had been, of course, abandoned; its inhabitants had left to join the other humans in the Citadel.

--------

A solitary figure passed through the Glyph Shield raised to protect the two uppermost tiers of the citadel, and settled noiselessly on the floor in front of the entrance to the chamber which occupied the topmost floor. Its arrival went unnoticed – apparently, no Hylden guard was watching the sky –

--------

_The Hylden deemed themselves secure in the fortress of my home; I must endeavour to divest them of that false impression._

_Yet, their presence here confirmed my earlier presentiment: it was in Avernus that my enemies had crossed the barrier between the realms; thus, it was in Avernus that I would find passage to Avici, where Janos Audron was held prisoner._

--------

The sixth-floor chamber was empty; and almost unaffected by time. There was the large emblem of his on the floor, and the smaller ones on the walls, as clear and untarnished as when he had last seen them, which had been a hundred years ago; there were the enchanted lights which sprung to life as soon as he crossed the threshold; and, finally, at the far end, there was the empty throne –

Avernus had been his private retreat; his court and the seat from which he had ruled Nosgoth had lain at the Sanctuary of the Clans, at the Pillars. Nevertheless, the topmost floor of the tower was dedicated exclusively to an audience chamber; for though from the Sanctuary he had issued orders as the Emperor of the people of Nosgoth, it had been to the pinnacle of Avernus that the people had sent prayers to their God.

It had been once a rumour amongst the people of Nosgoth that, if one were to brave the hostile lands and reach Avernus; and if one were to climb all the steps of the staircase which wound all the way up to the top of the tall tower; and if one were to be fortunate enough – one would perhaps have the privilege of looking into the face of God. Then, the pilgrim would be able to ask for a single favour; and the God would grant it, whether the petitioner were one of the Clan Lords, his own progeny, a fledgling vampire, or even a mere human.

It had been the construction of this chamber which had bred those rumours; he, on his part, had done nothing to dispel them. They had provided a loophole in the, otherwise carefully maintained, feudal structure of the Clans; an outlet for the resentment inevitably generated by the inherent inequity of the system. They had given the lower castes of the Empire hope, a dream on which to feed; and he had found it mildly amusing that even in their despair, in their dreams to rebel against the instated order, the people, vampire and human alike, had turned to him, its author.

Hope was, indeed, a terrible illusion.

--------

He left the chamber, devoid of all but memories, and followed the winding helical stairway down and around the tower. He still encountered no Hylden, but halfway down, he came across an unmistakably Hylden artefact – the machine which generated the Shield; quite similar to the one he had destroyed in the ruins of Malek's Bastion. He decided to leave the generator intact for the time being; although it appeared that the Hylden still had not noticed him, the loss of the Shield would certainly alert them that something was amiss; and he did not want that yet; not if there existed the possibility that they could reach Janos before he did.

There was a large gap in the staircase just outside of the entrance to the fifth-floor chambers. To get any further, he would have to fly; but he had no reason to do so, for now: the lower floors were not protected by a Glyph shield; if anywhere, the Hylden troops must be here. He opened the heavy cast-iron door which led into the chambers –

There was no one inside.

He entered the darkness.

The fifth-floor chambers were those he had used when he had felt the time of Change upon him. The evolution of a new physical feature had been always a taxing process to his body, and had usually exhausted nearly all of its powers. He would emerge from the state of Change weakened, and almost crazed with bloodlust, as though he had been a newborn fledgling; and so he would remain until he had fed. And much like a newborn's, his eyes would hurt when in contact with even the weak light of Nosgoth's sun; and so, the fifth-floor chambers were completely windowless, like a crypt.

The only light he would suffer while Changing came from torches; even now, some were still mounted in the holders on the walls. With casualness which belied the power invoked by his gestures, he lit them one by one as he made his way through the chambers. The dim, flickering light barely pierced the darkness, revealing very little; yet enough for him to _remember_. The stone slab on which he would lie unconscious whilst his body would undergo its peculiar metamorphosis, following the enigmatic instructions issued by his blood; the manacles and fetters for the humans who would have been left in this place with him, and would later serve him as his first meal after awakening (at this point, he remembered how, once, he had attacked Zephon when the fool had entered the main room instead of waiting in the antechamber, as had been the custom); the stains of blood which, in spite of all the slaves' efforts, had never really managed to come off –

A shot of blinding light flashed in the nearly utter darkness, disappearing so quickly that he could almost think it was never there, if not for the afterimage burned deep in his retina –

He turned a corner –

_Again_.

He waited – for a while no longer than a heartbeat (his own lack of heart immaterial in this regard; things would come to an odd end, indeed, if he forgot how fast a heart beat) – and then, cast the spell and slowed the flow of time around himself.

And then, the flash repeated; but in the unhurried time, it was no longer merely a flash; but a portal.

--------

There was not much of the demon realm which he could see through the opening; only misshapen blobs of yellow and red, constantly in motion, spinning and twirling around one another in a miniature replica of the Abyss. He could not see where the path led on the other side – whether he would find himself in an open and deserted place, or in a closed room full of enemies. Still, he did not hesitate; moving before the opening closed and before time was returned to its usual pace, he stepped through –

– and saw a shadowy realm; but one filled with a clear, harsh, unforgiving glow of a yellow-reddish hue – the glow of a dying sun; but there was no sun in the sky, the glow was penetrating, omnipresent, without a single source; and he was suddenly sure that the harsh light never yielded to twilight or night; that there was no respite for the eyes in this realm of shadow –

– and heard naught but dead silence; but silence underscored with an incessant sound rather _sensed _than _heard, _an irregular, variable infrasonic vibration which, he somehow knew, drove one first to disquiet, then to despair, and eventually to suicide or madness –

– and smelled and tasted fire, and brimstone, and other, completely alien, substances in the scalding-hot fumes which suffused the air; the toxic vapours burned his lungs and coated his skin with filth and glued the feathers of his wings together – and he was again reminded of how Avernus had earned its name –

– and felt, lingering in the air, the _wrongness_ of this realm; and however strong the feeling was in Avernus, _here_ it was multiplied manifold –

– and was overcome by a terrible weakness; for the Pillars' powers, tied to Nosgoth as they were, barely reached into this place.

--------

It took a moment before he recovered control of his mind and body; and then, he finally saw the city at which he was looking.

Built on several layers of platforms protruding from the inner walls of the crater (because it _was_ a volcano, he suddenly understood when the fumes parted for a moment and he saw the lava below – an _enormous_ volcano: the whole tower of Avernus would fit inside it and ample place would still remain), it boasted a quintessentially Hylden architecture: cold, grey, alien to his vampire tastes. Enormous buildings rose from the platforms; every single one much like the next, without any superficial feature to distinguish between them; their constructors clearly considered aesthetical pleasure secondary to functionality. Translucent, glasslike tunnels ran between the buildings; buildings lying on different levels were joined by vertical piers which, he presumed, enclosed some manner of lifts. All traffic between the buildings must have gone via tunnels and lifts: the platforms themselves were empty of people. That was, perhaps, why no one had yet noticed his arrival, though he was standing in the open, on top of one of the massive edifices –

And it was then that he felt something brush his mind; a feather-light touch, and one not quite concentrated on him – rather, much like a beam of light from a lighthouse sweeping the horizon. Belatedly, he tried to cloak his mind, to make himself invisible – but that proved difficult: for he had been taken by surprise, and the seeker was old and powerful; and on familiar territory, whilst he was on hostile ground.

"_Who goes there?" _he heard an intrigued Whisper resound inside his skull. "What creature enters Avici, the Unrelenting? Wait! I _know_ you – The _Scion_ –?"

The presence in his mind withdrew abruptly; he grasped the thin thread of thought and made chase to it; he now recognised the speaker. "Why so surprised, prophetess? You said it yourself: we _would_ meet again."

"And so I did," the Hylden Seer replied, oddly amused in the face of her evident inability to shake off Kain's mental pursuit, "Well, Scion – shall I alert my people to your presence here?"

"If it pleases you to hear their death cries." He decided to cut the banter short. "I seek Janos."

He felt the presence – _Eirene_ – flinch at the mention of the name. "Then you seek in vain. The Audron is not here."

"Is that so? Perun appeared to think differently."

"Perun knew no better," the Hylden hissed out angrily. "Of course," she continued, suddenly returning to her previous cool amusement, "you need not believe _my_ word on _that_, Scion –

– Janos was kept in the palace, in the lower city. You will recognise the place when you see it: of _that_, I am sure."

The Hylden's last words were accompanied by a decisive _snap _as the mental connection between them was broken; for a moment, on a lark, he tried to search Eirene out in the mindscape of Avici – but could not find her. It was as if she had become invisible to him; it was clear to him that she had far more control over the mind connection that she had let him believe – and that their conversation was over until she decided otherwise.

--------

'_Twas either cunning or madness which propelled the Hylden Seer into giving me the run of Avici; which of the two it was, but time could tell._

_For now, one thing was clear: parted from the Pillars' nurturing influence, I could not hope to win Avici by force. In its stead, I must employ guile and guise: however repulsive I found the idea, to enter the Hylden's lair, I must first enter a Hylden's skin._

--------

The massive thoracic muscles and the black-feathered wings shrivelled and shrunk, giving way to a much slighter build; the dark veins which criss-crossed his skin spilled their colour onto the lighter parts of his body, until it was in whole a uniform greyish-green; the white hair disappeared, leaving only a naked scalp behind – but in its place, the ridges at the sides of his head grew and joined to form a crown of bone –

The eyes lost their colour, becoming a dull grey; the sharp canines and talons retracted; the Reaver and the clothes melted into a shapeless mass – and then reformed into the sort of light, unobtrusive armour that the Hylden of this age appeared to prefer –

Vorador's ring in his ear vanished; and the illusion was complete.

--------

Nearby, he found a place where a judicious use of telekinesis (which, feeble as it was, still sent a spasm of pain cruising through his body) caused the grey mass from which the Hylden buildings were constructed to give in – only slightly; yet enough to allow him passage inside.

The Hylden, once he encountered them, paid him no heed; clearly, his disguise was more than adequate, and they all took him for one of their kindred. However, as he soon found out, Avici was a labyrinth; a labyrinth for which he had neither guide nor map. He slowly made his way through it – through the narrow corridors, lit by the eerie glow of the Glyph lamps (he was fortunate in that the Earth Pillars had bestowed on him immunity to Glyph energy: for its application was ubiquitous here, and all guards wore armours with Glyph insignia on them), and through the wide ones, usually located on the perimeters of the edifices; their walls constructed of large panes of glass to admit the red glow of the lava inside. The pathways in the larger corridors were moving, one lane for each direction of movement; the translucent passages between the buildings contained vehicles, much like those he had encountered in Meridian and in the nameless city across the sea he had once visited; the vertical shafts were, perhaps, the most peculiar concept of them all: for they contained Warp Gates; one simply stepped into them at one level, and emerged at the one to which the shaft led at the other side.

And, as it turned out in the end, there _were_ murals adorning the streets and squares of the city: only that they were not murals, but bas-reliefs; and there were also sculptures, proper sculptures. They usually showed either one or all three of the Hylden commanders he had met in Nosgoth: Yarovit, with his sword and the Glyph shield raised around him; Perun, rising out of a giant wave of water; Sakhmet, with a ball of energy in one hand, the other one invoking some spell; at times, these effigies were faithful to reality; at times, they were stylised, showing them as – as he assumed – the Hylden must have looked before their banishment to this land. Several times, he encountered a likeness of the Hylden Lord who had led the previous invasion on Nosgoth –

Once, in a rather backward alley, he came across a most singular tableau. It featured the triumvirate of generals, in the rather ordinary triumphant pose; however, when he looked closer, he saw the outline of _another_ figure, faintly, sketchily drawn in the background behind the three; but beyond that point, he could say nothing of it –

He walked about the massive buildings; up and down, now nearing the side of the buildings which skirted the lake of lava, now penetrating the streets carved in the rocky walls of the giant mountain; but, save for the Seer's vague suggestion, he had no clue at all where to seek Janos Audron in this maze. And so, as he made his way through Avici, he found himself unconsciously descending from one level to another; without thinking seeking for a building that might be termed a palace; and, at last, he found it.

The shaft which took him to the lowest level of the city did not end inside a building, in the sort of room where all the previous shafts he had entered up to that time had began and ended; instead, as he found out when he stepped out of it, its outlet was outside, on the sort of grey platform which carried the gigantic structures. In front of him stood a, comparatively small, yet rather lavishly decorated, building – the first one he had seen in Avici with statues and relieves on the outer side of its walls –

Or rather, such a building's _ruins_; for the whole part of the building right of the door was completely caved in. He set out to investigate this matter closer – but almost immediately, another issue captured his attention –

The air was much cooler here than it had been but a level above; and the light was much subdued instead of being the harsh, unremitting glare to which he was slowly getting used in this place; however, to his best estimate, the heat here _should_ be such that most things should be set alight just by being in touch with the air; and he should be nearly blinded by the glow; for the platform he was now on should be very close to the magma surface –

In fact, it was _closer_: half-submerged in it, as Kain discovered when, risking complete blindness, he turned around to look at the lava lake. But between the lava and the grey mass of which the city was constructed – and rising into the air, up to the platform on the level above – was a uniform wall of green: incredibly condensed Glyph energy, he presumed, which filtered out most of the light and the heat coming from the outside. The energies needed to power such an installation must have been enormous; the Hylden must have somehow obtained them from the volcano itself –

He turned back to the palace (for it was now clear that it was what the building in front must have been before it had been destroyed; even if not for the statues posted outside of it, then for the immoderate squandering of resources required to set up this small oasis of calm), and began to walk towards it –

A Hylden guard in armour suddenly emerged from the ruins; Kain did not wait until the man approached and attacked, or asked whatever questions he could have; instead, he sent forth a part of his self, of his spirit –

– And took over the control of the Hylden warrior's mind. This was a rather old skill of his, one he had not employed for centuries; while there were far faster ways of killing, he had never reached the level of refinement which would permit him to use the ability to extract information; his victims' minds were almost completely destroyed by the possession; and, in any case, he had found he could never remain outside of his own body long. However, several times during his trek through Avici, he had been faced with the task of operating complicated machinery; and the gift returned to him, as if he had never stopped using it –

– He ordered the Hylden to walk to the edge of the platform – and _jump_; he left the hapless creature's mind just as the guard struck the wall of Glyph energy below.

--------

Once alone on the platform, he walked up the ornate pathway towards the palace door again; and this time, he at last did manage to reach his goal. He did not bother to try to open the door, however; rather, he simply stepped onto and over a broken part of the wall –

The floor of the destroyed part of the palace was covered in a clutter of twisted metal, white cables, shards of glass and pebbles of the ubiquitous grey substance from which all Hylden constructions in Avici were made. A particularly large piece of an inner wall was still standing, with half of a massive door still embedded in it. There was the outline of a half of a lock in the half of the door; he found the triple seal of the Hylden princes in his belongings and put it in the slit; it fit perfectly.

"Curious, is it not?" he suddenly heard Eirene's amused voice –

"The key fits the lock," he replied. "But neither reveals what was hidden behind."

"The invasion armies were already several days gone when the servants rebelled," the Seer continued, undaunted by his disagreement, "They took the Audron with them as they escaped. The Audron – and the Stone."

"The Stone?" It could _not_ be –

"The Nexus Stone, Scion. I believe it is familiar to you?"

Apparently, it _was_. "Intimately."

"It powered a portal which sent the armies to the Pillars and to Lanthanesthai –"

"– And there, to their oblivion," he finished; he already knew this part of the tale, even if only now had he learnt Malek's Bastion's olden name. "And now, you say, the Stone has been commanded by Janos?"

He felt the Hylden hesitate. "He took it with him as he left Avici with his retinue of demons; demons whom he would not have the strength to bid himself. I fear –"

"Save your fears for those who find use for them, Hylden," Kain retorted. "_I_ need but _one_ thing of you: your _prophecy_. What is it?"

At this, Maat'ash'Eirene seemed to regain her previous poise. "Nothing; and all," she replied, and Kain bristled: for now, there was nothing he could do to force the answer out her; not here, not in Avici, not physically separated from her as he now was –

And the Seer was aware of it, of course – clearly amused by the vague irritation of his she must have sensed, she teased the vampire, "Seek me out, Scion, if you wish – and perhaps _then_ you shall receive another answer. There is a ship which will ferry you through the fiery lake; descend into the inferno, and then we shall parley. Either that – or seek Janos; and wonder why, free, _he_ hadn't sought you out first."

And with that, the Hylden's presence disappeared from his mind again.

--------

He searched through the ruins of the palace; through the part of it which was ruined, and the part of it which was intact; but there was little of interest to him; the Hylden princes, upon leaving Avici, must have destroyed all things of importance –

The one thing of interest he _did_ find was the conduit which took him back to Nosgoth.


	10. Una Salus Victis

**Chapter 9**

**Una Salus Victis**

Casting the Time spell which let him enter the portal took away nearly all of his strength; and so, when he emerged out of the heat and light into a cold, dim place, he was again forced to halt for a moment to adjust to his surroundings; as he had been forced to do when he had first entered the Unrelenting, Avici.

His powers recovered quickly; and as they did, he released the illusion which he had been keeping up until this point; the false visage slid off him like water slides off a water fowl's back. He stretched and fluttered his wings, shaking off the greasy, noxious residue which clung to the black feathers and glued them together; then, he looked around –

The laws of space must have applied differently to Avici than they did to Nosgoth; for though _there_, his arduous trek through the city and the realm had taken him, in his estimate, quite a long way – _here_,to his incredulity, he found himself again in the bowels of the Avernus ziggurat –

– merely several tiers beneath his starting point.

The second and third floors of the tower were combined into one giant hall; the peculiar construction of the tower ensured that, in spite of the lack of any internal support structures, the building was stable and did not collapse. There _was_ a central column, but it served only to support a winding helical staircase (which ran deasil, unlike the widdershins-headed external stairs); the staircase was connected to the several platforms which ran under the walls of the tower at different heights only by the narrowest of bridges. There were large windows in the walls here; even so, the weak light of Nosgoth certainly was not sufficient illumination for what he had needed of this place; and so, enchanted lights had been embedded every so often in the walls, floors and steps – everywhere where he had felt them necessary. They now lit up as he approached them, revealing the room's contents.

_There_ stood the six suits of armours of the six Sarafan warrior-priests whom he had made his sons and lieutenants. The armours should have rusted long before he had opened the coffins of their wearers; but the Time and States magic laid on them was very strong, indeed: for here they were, still intact millennia later – apart from, of course, the places where they had been pierced by the Reaver's blade –

_There _was the altar of the cathedral which had stood in this place before he had ordered the ruins of Avernus to be levelled in the preparation for the construction of his fortress; and beside it, the text of the scripture which spoke of the cult of Hash'ak'Gik –

_There _were the odds and ends he had salvaged from the ruins of Janos Audron's Aerie – apart from Vorador's, some of the first known vampire artefacts he had come across –

_There _were Raziel's wing-bones, still covered in blood, as they had been on the day he had ripped them off his firstborn's back before he had ordered his execution –

_There _was the multitude of Hylden trinkets he had ordered brought here from Meridian for study –

_There _hung the (carefully preserved) standards of Willendorf and a hundred other human armies he had defeated in the course of his conquests of Nosgoth; both the first, failed one, when he had fought alongside Vorador; and the second, victorious one, wherein he had been assisted by his sons –

_There _was the guillotine which had once cut off the old vampire's head; he had it fetched here from Moebius' museum in the caves which hid the Chronoplast –

And _there _was the broken device which had provided him with the first taste of time-streaming; it had taken more than a century of intensive hunt throughout all Nosgoth to find it after he had won the realm the second time.

_There _was the goblet over which he and the Founder of the Citadel (an utterly insolent human, he smiled) had sworn their covenant of blood; _there _was the most peculiar sword which the Hylden Lord had borne when he had defeated Kain in the Battle of the Canyons; _there_ was the coat of arms of his human House, taken from the family palace in Coorhagen; _there_ was the chessboard – the board itself he had salvaged from the ruins of Vorador's mansion in the Termogent Forest, but the figures he had specially made for himself: six Sarafan warriors carved in bone, under command of Moebius and Malek, faced six jet vampire Lieutenants led by a miniature version of himself. (There was no Dark Queen; in her place was only a shapeless lump of jet.) The game ended in a stalemate.

And _there_ were what few things he had managed to recover of the arms he had wielded and the armours he had worn during his fledgling travels across Nosgoth. The non-enchanted mace and axes had long turned into rust; the armour of flesh had rotted; the armour of bone had crumbled into dust; the Chaos Armour had been simply lost. But the armour he had worn when his human life had ended, and the sword which had ended it were both there; and so was the ever-flaming sword he had found in a keep near Vorador's mansion, and the Wraith Armour he had discovered during his first foray into the Avernus catacombs –

Except that they were not.

---------

_The armour and the sword were gone. Someone had passed this way before me; someone had armed himself against his enemies –_

_But if this someone had been Janos Audron, then who were his enemies?_

---------

Abruptly, he turned away from the empty stacks he had been inspecting and looked upwards, to where the spiral staircase opened into the fourth-floor chambers –

Therein had once lain his treasure room. He had never come to find much use for precious metals and stones – he had never begun to share Vorador's appetite in luxury and decadence; the only tribute that had ever been of interest to him had been that of fear and blood. Nevertheless, he _had_ been the ruler of the land, and tribute _had_ been paid: and it had been in the fourth-floor chambers of the Avernus tower where it had been stored.

Little by little, he ascended the steps of the winding staircase; and as he did this, he suddenly smelled a familiar odour: the stench of decomposing bodies. For a moment, he wondered why he hadn't felt it before, outside; the wind must have been unfavourable –

He came out of the opening, and started to make his way in the direction where the stench was the strongest. To his left and right were the heaps of gold and jewels: royal rubies and amethysts, emeralds which looked like crystals of pure Glyph energy, sapphires, clear as the sky that now never was; white, black and rosy pearls from the seas of Meridian crunched under his feet –

He paused for a moment in the entrance to the main hall, taking in the scene of carnage within.

Some of the Hylden must have been killed by strikes of the Flame Sword; for their bodies were charred and scorched. Other corpses, however, bore rather different marks: they were completely drained of blood.

A vampire had fed here.

---------

There was an inactive Gate near one of the walls, on a section of the floor cleared of jewels; and he knew that the reason it was inactive was because it lacked the most important part: the focusing gem, the Nexus Stone. Under the opposite wall stood a Shield generator – or rather, the remnants of one; Janos had treated it no more leniently than Kain himself had treated the one in the ruins of Malek's Bastion –

There was the – already familiar – flicker of a conduit leading to Avici in one corner of the chamber; finally, opposite the entrance which had brought him here, there was the corridor which led to the antechamber; and beyond that, to Nosgoth. He wavered briefly, considering where he should go next –

---------

_Thus far, all evidence corroborated Eirene's words: Janos Audron had, indeed, escaped Avici after the Hylden armies had invaded Nosgoth. In Avernus, he had found weapons; having slain the Hylden guards, taken the Nexus Stone and destroyed the Ward Shield, he had departed; whither, I was yet to discover._

_And if all this was true, then perhaps so was this: that it was Janos who had commanded the demons which had attacked the Hylden armies, thus easing my passage through Nosgoth. Otherwise, his escape and the fiends' mutiny had been... peculiarly coincident in time. _

_Indeed; so far, everything the Hylden Seer had told me proved either true or impossible to falsify –_

_Yet more interesting was that which she had neglected to mention._

---------

He made his choice: he cast the spell which slowed the passage of time, and, smoothly assuming again the disguise of a Hylden, he stepped into the passage which led back to Avici.

---------

Even aware of what would happen to him on the other side, he was nigh powerless to counteract the sudden weakening he suffered. It was, therefore, a good thing that he had altered his appearance _before_ entering the portal: this bought him precious seconds as the Hylden guard who witnessed him materialise was unsure of what she should do. Before she finally decided that she would rather shoot than ask questions, Kain had already recovered and moved to dominate her mind; once there, he simply ordered the guard to shoot herself.

He looked at the corpse on the ground, and adjusted his disguise to match the insignia on the guard's armour; then, he scanned his surroundings.

He was in a rather large, windowless room, lit by bright lamps set in the ceiling; save for him, the corpse and some crates on the floor, the hall was empty. He checked one of the crates: it was full of weapons. He checked another: likewise.

The room had only one exit, and that was directly in front of him. To the guard, who could not have seen the conduit, all must have looked as if he had emerged from the wall behind, or teleported in. (At this point, he began to wonder how precisely the Hylden armies had managed the passage in the other direction, into Nosgoth. There was no obvious gaudy vortex of a Gate this time; or, at least, he was yet to encounter one. Perhaps, he mused, the restoration of the Pillar of Dimension had something to do with the matter.)

He approached the door, which opened automatically in front of him –

Dazzling yellow-red light hit his sensitive eyes, blinding him for a moment; it appeared that the door led, of all places, to Avici's _outside_ –

But when his eyes accommodated to the light, he saw the multitude of Hylden milling about the large open area; and, to his left, a row of houses: not the giant buildings of Avici, the buildings which themselves contained buildings, but some rather ordinary two-or-three-story houses. (Ordinary, that is, when one took into account the fundamental alienness of Avici: the buildings were made of the same grey mass whereof everything here was composed; they had no windows, and the doors which led to them were unique to Hylden compounds: metallic, businesslike and singularly uninviting.)

And then, he suddenly noticed that, unlike the parts of Avici he had seen before, every Hylden here wore armour and was armed: he must have inadvertently infiltrated the Hylden's military base.

---------

He stepped back into the relative dimness of what he now assumed to be a storehouse – which was, objectively speaking, quite brightly lit; but anything was dim in comparison with the infernal glow of Avici. The outside, he suspected, was not really _outside_: rather, the ceiling and the walls were so far away – not to mention, most likely at least semi-transparent – that he simply couldn't see them. Perhaps this place had been constructed precisely for the purpose of simulating _an_ outside to the constantly confined Hylden soldiers, to prepare them for what awaited them in Nosgoth –

He quickly shut down the unproductive line of thought; after all, he had to prepare himself for a major confrontation –

"_Eirene_," he called out at last into the mindscape of Avici, seeking the Hylden Seer's mind; but there was no reply.

"Eirene," he demanded again. The strain of the hunt made him drop the reins of the illusion; and perhaps for the better, he decided, and let the spell wholly disperse.

"I _know_ you are there, Eirene. And you _will_ answer me; for unless we talk now, we shall _never_ talk again – and you would not want that, would you? After all," he made a brief pause, "_Janos'_ was not the _only_ prison within the prison."

"You– are right," he heard at last the Hylden's uncertain reply. "How did you _know_?"

"Your brother Yarovit told me before he died," Kain said dismissively – though inside, he was exuberant; the gamble had paid off. "This sigil – it was not made to open only Janos' cage; but also _yours_. The Sight, if used properly, can be a powerful weapon; and none of the triumvirate would entrust the key to this weapon to any other. That is why, when the Nexus Stone went missing, and the contact with Yarovit was broken, Perun and Sakhmet had to fight through the human city to recover the third fragment–"

"Yes," the Hylden Seer interrupted him, laughing delightedly, "Even as they parted, Yarovit did not want to give up his piece of the seal, so afraid was he that the key-keeper would betray the others and ally with me. _Fool_," she finished contemptuously.

Kain smirked: much suddenly became clear to him. "He was a fool, indeed; because _you_, Seer, have betrayed them all, have you not? Tell me, Eirene: _was_ there a prophecy?"

The Seer was indignant. "All I ever said was that, in the end, the Hylden royal blood would spell out its ruler. What matter of mine was that these _usurpers_ of my mother's throne – _my_ throne – chose to misinterpret the words in their favour? They could have been my trusted servants; instead, like our father, they decided to rule in my stead. Then they should have killed me instead of keeping me imprisoned; yet even Sakhmet, however proficient in Time magic, had not the Sight which comes only with the blood!"

Kain smiled at the venom he now heard in the Hylden's voice; in her fury, Eirene revealed things which she would be much better off keeping hidden. "And so you betrayed them," he concluded calmly.

"And so I betrayed them," she agreed.

"Then," he nodded his head in acknowledgment, "you truly _are_ your mother's daughter. You have used me to destroy the competition for your throne." It was odd how _little_ he felt. Once, he would have been seething with fury after the revelation that once again, he had been another's pawn; now, all his feelings amounted to a sort of vague amusement. Eirene did not have a long life before herself, of course; but his heart would not really be in the kill. She would be just another addition to the long line of his victims, as two of the Hylden commanders she had betrayed already were, and the third one would soon become. "Except that now, Seer, you are in a quandary: for now it is _I_ who has the seal which binds you. _That_ is why you wanted me to seek you out, is that not? And I _will_. You have _that_ granted."

To him, the conversation was over at this point; hence, it was to his no inconsiderable amazement that he heard the Hylden reply, seething with anger, "Do you _really_ think this is about the _throne_, Kain? _Take_ it if you wish, for all I care! For are you not the prophesised king of royal blood?"

"What did you say, Hylden?" he asked incredulously.

When Maat'ash'Eirene replied this time, she was noticeably calmer; still, her Whisper was such as if she had been speaking through gritted teeth, "My mother – she shared her blood with you from her own free will, did she not? In the time when the southern Gate was open; when my father was in Nosgoth; and the Binding was weak; then, she and I had words together. She did not tell me much; but this, she _did_: if you wish the throne, then, Scion" she paused, and this time, the impression of gritting teeth was even stronger, "the way is open," she finished with fake calm.

"And I presume that in return for your generous proposal, you, Seer, would take the position of my second-in-command?"

"Of course."

"And it will satisfy you?" he insisted. "You – the proud daughter of a Queen?"

"Scion," the Hylden laughed bitterly, "it is better to serve in heaven than to reign in hell; and while it may be impossible to die in Avici, it is _equally_ impossible to live here. _Yes_, it _will_."

"But why should _I_ agree to your proposal, Seer?"

"For two reasons. For justice: for, by now, you must know all of our original sin, our undue punishment and our final crime. I have heard you answer my unasked question: you harbour no better opinion of the vampires' god than we do; thus, if we have sinned, in that sin _you_ are an accomplice. Our crime is unpardonable – but I have seen you before you closed Avici from Nosgoth: you no longer share the curse we have cast on the vampires; and so, the effects of the crime are already expired. _That_ leaves only the punishment which we have not merited – and yet which we still suffer."

Kain laughed. "And the _other_ reason? I suppose that, having made that utterly misguided appeal to my better nature, you will now attempt to entice my baser instincts? My _avarice_? My _will_ to _power_?"

The Hylden snorted, "Perhaps I would; but from your words, I deduce that you have already appraised that part of the offer on your own. The civilians and the soldiers: all souls of Avici to claim as your own; in return for claiming all souls of Avici as your own... Are you not tired of chasing after vampire phantoms, Scion? And when at last you do not catch them, will you content yourself with _human_ subjects?"

"You sound desperate, Seer."

"In despair lies the one hope of the damned, Kain."

To that, he found no reply.

---------

Maat'ash'Eirene withdrew when she sensed that the conversation was over, and that he would have nothing of her for the time being. And it was then, as his consciousness of the Hylden's presence faded, that he was suddenly struck by the incongruity between the lofty words which had been spoken in the place where he now was – and the place itself: an anonymous storehouse lost somewhere in the maze of Avici. It was strangely anticlimactic: to receive an offer of ruling a whole race in a place such as this –

On the unexpected proposal itself, he was in two minds: there were two major hurdles, as far as he was concerned. He did not know if the aspirant kingmaker was, indeed, as capable of putting him in power as she boasted; and he did not know if he managed to consolidate his influence among the Hylden before he would have to kill her. For just as it was obvious to him that he would need her in the beginning of his reign, it was equally clear that the betrayer would not take long before she betrayed again. Old habits, as they said, died hard.

On the other hand, he mused as he passed by the crates and stacks of weapons, parts of the giant cannons the likes of which he had seen in action in the human Citadel, and, above all, the crowds of Hylden warriors rambling about the open square on top of the massive building, the offer _was_ rather interesting. Given an _efficient_ leader, these troops –

---------

In his disguise, and controlling the minds of the occasional less fortunate Hylden whom he needed to operate machinery, he moved through the Hylden base: through the barracks, storehouses, shooting ranges, weapon works and laboratories – without major difficulties; his only problem lay, as before in Avici, in finding his destination. All he knew was that he must find a ship – and _that_ must be at the level of the lava surface; but he did not even know if he was in the correct part of the city.

He had already descended several levels – the heat here was such that he again found himself wondering why things did not simply spontaneously self-combust – when he stumbled upon the first golem.

The area where he found it had been, by far, curiously devoid of Hylden. (Afterwards, he decided that they probably simply did not come here, into this heat, if they could help it, instead leaving the maintenance to the golems.) On the other hand, it was full of tanks, vats, pipes and complicated mechanisms whose purposes he refrained from guessing.

The golem was an affair in fireproof clay: initially, it must have been completely white – the colour was still visible in parts of its bulk – but with time, it became dirty and smudged. It had six leg-like structures on which it moved, and four upper limbs, each of which ended differently. It reminded him slightly of the vampires of the Zephonim Clan shortly before Raziel's return to Nosgoth.

He did not know if the golem was impervious to his illusion; if so, it must have lacked the intent or the intelligence to turn hostile, because it simply scrambled its way past him; as did all the golems he encountered henceforth. He walked among them, and, like their masters above, they paid him no attention, concerned solely with their own tasks. After the nearly constant fighting of the recent days – or has it been weeks, or _months_ already: months scattered across millennia? He found it hard to tell – after this time, this walk was oddly refreshing in its simplicity.

In the end, he found it: a massive door with a lock in the shape of the sigil of the Hylden princes. It suddenly occurred to him that Perun and his siblings must have made this trip through the mechanic underbelly of Avici more than once –

The door opened, and again was he dazzled by the brightness and the heat; he was standing outside of the city – and _this_ time, it was the _real_ outside. There was a pier; and, next to it, there was a ship. A thin layer of Glyph energy shielded both; it did not, however, rise into the air to protect the space _above_ the pier –

He cast the time-slowing spell and ran as fast as he could to the ship, swivelling between the lava jets suspended halfway in their motion in the air.

---------

The walls of the ship were transparent; and, as the vessel submerged into the lava, following some course imprinted into it long ago, he was treated to the vaguely disquieting panorama of liquid fire surrounding him on all sides. All that protected him now from death in flames was a thin layer of Glyph energy, and, more metaphorically speaking, the power of Hylden technology; this realisation did nothing to improve his mood.

There were three seats in the ship's cabin; he, however, decided against sitting down. He had let go of the illusion of Hylden appearance as soon as he had boarded; now, he was standing with hands crossed on his chest, looking calmly in the direction where the ship was heading.

"_Seer_?" he called into the fiery void; after their previous conversation, Maat'ash'Eirene no longer hid her presence from him; and now, he decided, was the time for them to talk again.

"Yes, Kain?" This time, the reply to his call came quickly; almost instantly.

"I believe that we agree in that there is only one way for the Hylden to remain in Nosgoth after the Pillars are restored."

"The one discovered by the Serioli," the Seer agreed.

"The Pillars," Kain continued, "must take the Hylden for vampires; and for that to happen, vampire blood – _my_ blood – must be shed for you and for your kind."

He made a short pause to let the Hylden understand the full import of his words; then, he continued, "_That_ was how Maat could and must continue to dwell in Nosgoth: Vorador's blood in her veins shielded her from the Pillars. However, Vorador demanded a payment."

"She traded her powers for her freedom." He could already tell from her tone that Eirene knew what he would say next; and that she did not like it.

"Exactly. I want a payment from _you_, Eirene."

"In my blood?" she asked slowly.

"No; I would not that you became _completely_ useless to me. Only a simple prophecy: I have an enemy; how shall I defeat him?"

There was no hesitation now. "I cannot meet your terms, Kain."

"You refuse? At this point, you _dare_ refuse me?" For some reason, this point-blank refusal made him feel the anger which even the discovery of the Hylden's previous machinations had not awakened.

"No, I do not," the Seer replied hurriedly. "I simply – cannot provide what you demand."

There was something in the Seer's voice which told him that she was telling the truth; she simply would not lie if she could help it, he reasoned. And she _had_ said something about 'closing off Avici from Nosgoth'...

"Because of the restored Pillars? The matter _can_ wait until we are in Nosgoth," he replied.

"No, _not_ because of that. Not even in Nosgoth, not even if I had the Nexus Stone, could I give you a different reply, Kain, however I might wish this." She laughed bitterly. "If the Audron had taken the Stone with him for _this_ reason, of all, he will be sorely disappointed. It will not be of much aid to him: he is now, as we all are, reduced to seeing only the present."

"And why should that be?" he asked; though already he was guessing the answer: he remembered how the Chronoplast portals would not show him the future –

"Because, Scion, something has happened which I had _never_ seen before: the time-stream is uncertain around you; futures come and go, constantly changing at your whim... Even now, I cannot see if I survive our meeting or not; and this ambiguity terrifies me. You are a free-willed creature, Kain. _That_ was why I could give my siblings no prophecy, even _if_ I had wished it; it was a gamble sending them to the places where you met them. As it was a gamble putting myself in that human... Tell me," Eirene's tone suddenly became inquisitive, "did she die soon after we had our little conversation?"

The abrupt change of topic surprised him. "No. She was alive when I last saw her. Why should you ask?"

"The same now applies to her. She has... disappeared."

---------

There was a clink as the automated ship touched something; a series of clanks as the bolts slid out, locked into their sockets, and turned; finally, a hiss as a door opened and the pressure levels between the two compartments evened out.

The room on the other side of the door had an austere decor identical to that of the ship; though, an act of mercy he would never have suspected from the Hylden, the walls of this chamber were almost dark, and only little of the blinding light passed through them. Someone was standing at the centre of the room: a thin wisp of green enclosed in a silver armour.

"Greetings, Eirene," the vampire smiled; or, at least, he bared his teeth.


	11. Conflict and Death

**Chapter 10**

**Conflict and Death**

_He was right: they really were once a fair race._

The thought – and once he realised how uncharacteristic it was for him, he could not help but wonder in precisely _which_ recesses of his mind it originated – occurred to him as he was watching Maat'ash'Eirene watch his library with something not entirely unlike voracious hunger in her eyes.

The library took the whole first floor of Avernus, and was the fruit of many years – many centuries – of travels and patient gathering of all the books still extant in Nosgoth at the beginning of the Empire. What had been of most interest to him had been, of course, the books relaying old legends and stories – he had hoped to find any trace of the Hylden and of the ancient vampires in them; but there was almost none. The vampires had been utterly merciless in their crusade to completely eradicate the Hylden from Nosgoth's history; the Hylden had truly become 'the Unspoken', their very existence known only to the chosen few. The humans, on their part, had not been nearly as successful in destroying the memory of the vampires – but still, all the books referring to his ancestors were at best biased in opinion, and at worst completely inaccurate and contrary to what he had already known for sure.

He had managed to recover some volumes from the keep of the Hylden General in Meridian, and from the ruins of the Aerie of Janos Audron, and those had turned out to be of some slight help to him; nonetheless, the majority of the images he had seen in the Chronoplast he still had had to laboriously piece together on his own.

Still, he mused as he watched the collection of manuscripts, he must admit that he had changed much from that fledgling who had once proudly proclaimed that he would not weep over lost tomes.

-------

Vampire blood flowed in Kain's veins; and that blood, he assumed, would be enough to shield his future Hylden subjects from the Pillars designed to banish them from Nosgoth. But his blood was also much more: it was the purified and purifying blood of the Scion of Balance, and _that_ turned out to have a rather unexpected effect on Maat'ash'Eirene: while in essence she was a pure Hylden no longer, she certainly looked the part; or at least what he presumed _could_ have been the part.

Tall (though not as tall as he was: shorter by a head) and slender, almost delicate in frame, with a classical oval face and high cheekbones, she reminded him slightly of her mother. But where Maat had had hair and a rather human colouring of her skin, Eirene had neither: what little of her skin he could see, on her hands and face, was green. _Squamous_ and green: covered with tiny scales, some lighter green, some darker, which formed odd patterns and seemed to move as the Hylden herself moved. Since what he had initially taken for armour was, in fact, also fashioned out of small metallic scales attached to bits of dark cloth, the whole arrangement looked incredibly _fluid_; and he was instantly reminded of Perun.

Topping all this were the emerald, almond-shaped, vertically-slit eyes – the only part of the Hylden's body which retained what he had until this point thought to be the distinctive Hylden colouring – and the massive crests on Eirene's head. These, it turned out, were no longer rigid and ossified: soon, he would find out that they moved as Eirene's mood changed: rising as she became alert, curious or angry; flattened when she was peaceful and relaxed.

And then, of course, there was the matter of the wings.

It appeared that the ridges on Maat's back had been nothing else but vestigial, ossified wings: and her daughter had them now back, fully evolved. They were just as he had seen them in the vampire murals in the Citadel of Tears: green and membranous. They reminded him slightly of Raziel's wings before he had destroyed them –

Yes, the Hylden General had been correct: the Hylden were fair of form. Or, at least, this one Hylden was.

She was also, in his estimate, proud and conceited, manipulative, stubborn in her hatreds and a confirmed traitor; frustrated in her ambitions to the throne and in her faculties: a Seer who could See no more, a mind-possessor who could possess minds no more; and who could tell what effects the vampire blood could have on the Hylden powers: perhaps she was now as useless as a sorceress as she was a warrior? (For, certainly, she was _no_ warrior; not with a build like _that._)

Currently, she was still grateful to him for her release and infused with a healthy dose of fear of him (she believed that he had managed to destroy all the three of her siblings, and he let her believe that, for the time being); still seething with anger at her captors – but he suspected that he would have to keep her on a short leash, lest the gratefulness and the fear fade, and the anger turn against him: the next impostor on the throne which she viewed as rightfully hers.

She was also, at present, unfortunately, his only link with the Hylden (and perhaps her concern for her people was one of her better traits): _that_ must soon change, of course.

First, however, there was the more important matter.

-------

"Free at last!" Eirene cried out, exultant, once she gathered her wits and understood where the conduit had brought them; the crests on her head rose with her mood. "Free! I have sworn on my mother's soul and my father's corpse that I would be free– And I am. Come, Kain, take me to a portal which opens on Avici proper, that I may introduce you to your new subjects–"

"The portals are on the upper floors of this keep; but we shall not be heading there yet. I need information, Eirene," he replied.

The Hylden's mood instantly deteriorated. "I told you: I can foretell neither your victory nor your defeat, Kain."

"That is why I do not ask it of you. Instead, tell me all you know of my enemy; _our_ enemy, now that you have entered my service. The Wheel of Fate: what do you know of it?"

He watched, amused, as the Hylden's crests rose and instantly fell at the mention of 'service': Eirene certainly did not yet rule over the unconscious movements of her new body; and her indignation was evident to him, even if her voice was calm when she replied, "What do you _want_ to know of it?"

The answer was simple. "Everything. How did the Hylden learn of its existence?"

The Hylden watched him for a moment in silence, gathering her thoughts; then, she bowed her head, and started to speak.

"In the beginning," she said, "there was a war; a war between two races as unlike as Earth and Water are different from Air and Fire. No one now knows why the war had ever started; some say this was simply because the two races met, so different and opposite each other they were."

"Then, word reached the Hylden that the vampires started worshipping this idol – the Wheel of Fate – and claimed that the Wheel let them see across the streams of time. In their folly, they laughed; for the vampires had ever been blind to time; and the Seers of royal blood knew that there was no fate, no destiny, only fortune, misfortune and luck; and so, the Wheel must be a fraud."

"They were wrong," Kain remarked, in his mind checking the information he received from Eirene with what he had learnt before: the existence of the Oracle; of the Chronoplast; the easiness with which the vampires had been deceived; the fact that Time was an Earth-aligned principle–

"They were wrong," the Hylden agreed calmly. "And they were proven wrong after another thousand years of incessant struggle passed; for it was then, they say," she hesitated slightly, "as the greatest Seer of them all lay in childbirth, that she suddenly saw all the time-streams – all the futures – coalesce into one. She saw this, and many other things; and she spoke words of prophecy. And it was then that the Hylden knew that the vampires had been correct all along, and that there _was_ a Wheel of Fate, to the misery of all; but it was late, too late for that, because destinies were already set and frozen, and it was in no one's power to change them; and that is all."

"The precious little of it there is," he observed. He rather hoped there would be something more to it, something which could perhaps help him _fight_ the fiend– "What happened later?"

The Hylden's emerald eyes narrowed and her crests again involuntarily rose and again fell; but she continued, "On the next day, the Seer was gone, having betrayed her people; or so they say. And though battles were fought to regain her, none were victorious; for," her eyes darted to the hilt of the Soul Reaver behind Kain's back, "the blade was seen on the battlefields, the tide of the war had turned, and the vampires were winning at last. And then, a year and a day after the prophecies were cast, the Pillars were raised and thus the Hylden banished; and the Seer's daughter, hatched, the first of the many born in Avici."

"And the vampires were cursed with bloodlust and immortality," Kain retorted; the shock he had received when he had learnt the latter of the two from Perun was still fresh. "Do not dare forget _that_, Hylden."

"Oh, the curse was ingenious, I daresay! You see," the Hylden chuckled, "it bound the vampires' souls so tightly to their bodies that they were not only immortal: they could not even escape their bodies _after_ their deaths. Never to be reborn; never to enter the Wheel again!"

"Unless, that is," he rejoined dryly: the Hylden's glee riled him, "the Soul Reaver consumed them." He took the sinuous blade off his back, and looked at it intently: it was as if he were seeing it for the first time again, back when Avernus had still housed a cathedral; or as if he had only just learnt again from the Chronoplast portals that it was Raziel's soul that was contained within it –

Raziel's soul; a Soul Reaver's soul–

A parade of images and memories: Raziel feeding on his brethren and on their brood; the _creature_ telling him that even now, pure, Kain continued to nourish him; Vorador's uncanny return, only to be felled again, this time by the Reaver; his own instinct, telling him what he had told Raziel: that the Reaver was the only weapon that could destroy him; a human voice, demanding of his sister that she help him, and she, replying that her brother leave the sword–

The Reaver: the only weapon capable of killing him, and, as he was becoming more certain every moment, the weapon created precisely _to_ kill him. After all, the both times he had died – or had thought he had died; the distinction now appeared to be blurry, at most – he had always appeared in what he now knew was Avici; and always lucid, more or less. And in Avici, it was impossible to die: it was the realm of uninterrupted life, uninterrupted suffering: but for him, it became a curious haven from the Wheel; _unless, that is_, he repeated in his thoughts, _the Reaver consumes me_–

(He wondered for a moment if Mortanius had known what precisely he had achieved; whom exactly he had brought unto Nosgoth. Probably not, he decided.)

Eirene, of course, was to know none of this; perhaps already she knew too much.

"Come," he said brusquely, putting the Reaver back in its usual place, "We must make haste."

"Where are we going? To Avici?" she asked.

"No. There are introductions overdue. _Much _overdue."

-------

They flew to the Pillars in silence; when he had opened the complex mechanism which opened the library's outer door, he was surprised to see that it was already late in the evening; and that the sun was already below the smoke cover, and about to set. His foray into Avici had taken the best part of the day.

The five restored Pillars were clearly visible in the western sky; the rays of the sun tainted them the deepest blood-red. As Kain neared them – Eirene had fallen slightly behind: she must still have trouble commanding her changed body – he could make out something move in the clearing–

The demons had returned: it would be a good opportunity to see how Eirene fared in combat.

-------

Eirene hovered in the air next to him; the crests on her head were standing erect and her emerald eyes were narrowed as she appraised their opponents below: another batch of the massive, black demons–

At last, she arrived at some decision: a shield appeared suddenly around her, surrounding her completely by a translucent green glow; the following moment, equally abruptly, the time around them slowed its pace. Before he had the chance to wonder how she managed to account for his existence in the spell, she was gone, diving with neck-breaking speed at the demons below–

From the above, he watched her: as she came out of the dive, a bit too early – probably afraid of losing the control of her drop – and released a wave of energy which knocked down several of the closest demons; and then, as she threw a series of telekinetic projectiles at the nearest downed fiend–

At that point, he decided that he had seen enough: Eirene, though he would be careful enough not to mention it to her, fought just like her late sister. That is, decent enough: she would be brilliant as support for a larger group – that she had slowed time meant, at least, that he did not have to do this himself. But she would never manage to deal with the fiends by herself.

And, of course, she did not have his regenerative powers–

He dove after her.

-------

The Hylden landed softly next to him and folded her wings. Her scale armour was charred in one or two places; but, on the whole, she appeared to be unharmed by what he presumed must have been the first battle in her life: her baptism of fire. She walked lightly between the demons' corpses left after the fight, watching the Pillars; if he could judge the expression on her alien face, with mixed feelings. The Pillars were to her, after all, the source and the symbol of her people's long captivity; on the other hand, it was clear that she could not deny the place its singular beauty.

He decided that he owed her some explanations.

"Nine Pillars," he said from behind her. "Four of them to regulate and draw on Nosgoth's native energies; each one of these tied to a different elemental principle. One acts as the axis of transference–"

"Balance, of course," she interrupted him dreamily; she touched tentatively the central Pillar, and then instantly withdrew her hand, as if the Pillar had burnt her. "Two bind us in Avici, so that we may access Nosgoth neither through space nor through time–" She turned round abruptly. "And the last two?"

"Conflict and Death," he replied dryly. For some time, he had been himself wondering about _these_.

For a moment, she appeared to be digesting the news; then, she must have decided that the names spoke for themselves, and that there was nothing to discuss here; because, in the end, she asked only, "You spoke of introductions, Scion?"

Kain nodded. "Follow me, Seer."

-------

Together, they descended into the subterranean chamber; it was already dark within, and so, they released several enchanted lights to accompany them; Kain did not need them, but Eirene, apparently, did not see well in the darkness. Given where she had lived the whole of her life–

"Ah. Kain. And you have found yourself a new lieutenant, I see. Does she know what happened to the _previous_ ones? Well – _do_ you, _Seer_?"

The booming voice of the Elder God filled the chamber completely; and, from the look on Eirene's face, she could hear it as well. The Hylden looked at Kain sharply, questioningly; the vampire smirked, and said, keeping to an excessively formal tone, "Eirene of the Hylden: meet the Hub of the Wheel of Fate."

The expression on Eirene's alien face was now priceless. "What–" she stuttered, "Is that true?" she demanded of Kain, of the chamber and of the world in general.

"That I am the Hub of the Wheel, the Engine of Life, the Devourer of Death? Yes, it _is_ true. And it _gladdens_ me to see you in Nosgoth, Eirene: for now I know that in your deathless prison, your kin has finally learnt the lesson of the importance of oblivion. Come, if you will, young Queen, and bring forth your people; live, die, and be redeemed in your rebirth–

The Wheel awaits; the past is forgiven."

Kain's eyes narrowed. He had brought Eirene to the Pillars in an attempt to give her anger a focus, to drive home the importance of following him against a common enemy; but he was beginning to think he had miscalculated. Eirene, knowledgeable as she appeared to be, was not, after all, aware of the demon's past machinations. And though in years she might be old – older than he was, in fact, he reflected with sudden surprise – in experience, she was definitely not... The Elder One was correct in this one regard: the Hylden was young. Young – and impressionable, susceptible to influence and flattery–

But, the damage was not yet done: for the Elder continued, "But you have not yet answered my question, Queen: has he ever told you what happened to his _previous_ followers?"

"There wasn't much time," she replied calmly; still, Kain could see how flattered she was by the honorific. "But pray _do_ tell: you have caught my attention."

"Then," the deep voice rumbled, "you do not know of his _champion_, imprisoned and tortured out of his mind until Kain found him and offered him release – the release that _never_ _came_? Of the _woman_ who nourished him from the brink of death, and whom he killed with his own hands the moment she dared _think_ that what was best for Kain might not be the same as what was best for Nosgoth?"

Kain's eyes narrowed involuntarily. Magnus and Umah: his conscience was clear on both accounts, of course – but declaring innocence now, of course, would do little to improve his position–

"And what of his precious firstborn, cast away and condemned to eternity of torment? And of his firstborn's children, all dead at the stake so that he could preserve his status–"

Now _that_ was surpassing ridicule. "You _dare_–"

"Yes, I _dare_," the rich voice calmly replied, "Some, he induced to sacrifice for him; others, he killed himself or left to die when he found no more use for them; either way, they all mark a bloody trail behind him while _he_ goes on and on, merrily prattling about his destiny! And _what_ is this destiny? A mere delusion, a wishful misreading of the prophecy which foretold his death–"

At that point, Kain finally found his opportunity to interrupt. "Only because from the outset, it had been engineered by _you_, fiend. But _not_ till the end: it had grown beyond your intent, had it not? Or have you already forgotten the beating that you have received in the Citadel of Tears, and the signs left behind in _that_ place?"

But it was clear that the Elder One was now speaking only for Eirene's benefit.

"_This_ is my _only_ counsel for you, Queen and Seer of the Hylden: when the time of choice comes, choose right. Choose right – or, like many before you, fall into the trap, and witness firsthand what happens to those who follow him and fall behind. Even _now_, _another_ burns for him; another moth drawn to his flame–"

At that, Kain laughed; he had to, else he could not contain his fury any longer.

"You have said too much, demon. You have _always_ said too much–"

-------

Suddenly, the vampire's speech was interrupted by a thundering roar.

"I grow weary of you, vampire," stated the disembodied voice; in a much more courteous tone, it added, "Until our next meeting, Seer."

She looked around–

"The water!" she cried out; already she was to her ankles in it–

As it turned out, her warning was unnecessary; for that, that – _bastard_ – was already halfway up the height of the chamber, and flying as fast as he could.

She followed him, emerging from the chamber seconds before it flooded completely – and straight into the demons' fire; manoeuvring in the crossfire of the spewed jets, they both shot high up into the air above; he first, she, somewhat behind–

Seconds later, she was thrown far away as a powerful shockwave spread through the air; her young, still tender wings suddenly shot with pain, unable to bear the terrible pressure. When the pain subsided, she blinked: for, to her incredulity, there seemed – no, there _were_ – two more Pillars risen in the distance; the vampire was hovering in front of them, completely unaffected–

"Follow me as fast as you can," the vampire cried her way, setting off in a roughly north-west direction; not even looking back to see if she followed.

She felt her crests rise of their own volition.

_Does he intend to return to Avici at all?_


	12. Fedayeen

**Chapter 11**

**Fedayeen**

_The unexpected realisation of one's free will provides for a fascinating, if excruciating, intellectual experience. Instead of contending with but a single source of manipulation – fate – the mind must suddenly take into consideration a whole gamut of them; not the least of which is the awareness of free will itself; and the awareness of the awareness; and thus on, until infinity._

_The exercise was certainly enough to entertain me on my way to the human Citadel._

-------

There was a multitude of reasons why Kain, the vampire, the Scion of Balance, the former Emperor of Nosgoth, should deign to deviate from his path to rescue a human. Some of them were good – the amusement to be derived from the act of denying a certain ancient parasite the same soul twice within two days, for instance; some were better – providing a convenient target for a certain Hylden's ambition, a rival with whom to compete for their superior's favour, instead of contesting said superior's sovereignty–

However, all these incentives paled next to the fundamental cause: his caprice. He had decided that the human would be saved, and his will would be done; and that was all there was to it.

There were, however, certain aspects of the matter to be considered.

For instance, if – _as_ – the Elder One had been the true architect of the elaborate trap set for Kain in Nosgoth's past, the possibility must be taken into account that a creature capable of devising such a plan had _not_ said too much during their last conversation at the Pillars. That, instead, _another_ trap had been planted–

Having assumed this proposal, the valid inference could be made that the trap would be sprung either by Kain's exercising his free will and rescuing the human, or by his exercising his free will and _refusing_ to rescue her, _after_ he decided that he was being manipulated into executing the rescue. There was also the possibility that in _both_ these instances, some deleterious effect would be produced; in that case, however, it was almost certain that the damage perpetrated by one of these choices would be much graver than the damage brought about by the other choice–

The spike of a known trap willingly entered is weakened at least by half; but was he entering the correct trap?

-------

Time, he sensed, was of essence. Unfortunately, he could not teleport to the Citadel: save for the underground chamber where he had talked with the matriarch of the city, he had retained in his memory no particular distinctive mark from his visit on the night before: the mist had obscured all. _Fortunately_, with the restoration of the two further Pillars, his spell-casting powers had improved again; hence, it had become feasible for him to repeatedly cast the time-slowing spell during his travel from the Pillars to the Citadel.

Onthis night, there was no mist; and so, as he was now flying noiselessly in the slowed time, seeking a place and a mind, he could clearly see the buildings and the streets, bathed in the sharp, bright electric light; most still bearing the traces of the fighting that had taken place there on the previous night–

_There._

A bonfire built on a large open square, surrounded by a multitude of yelling humans: the citizens of the Citadel must have been celebrating their recent victory–

-------

The stake had been prepared, he must grudgingly admit, with a measure of artistic skill: it was small enough that the human victim would actually _burn_, not merely asphyxiate–

A death by suffocation would have been almost instantaneous; a death by burning was not. Zosha was still alive – still conscious, in fact: he could hear her screams, oddly dilated by the slowed time – but not for long. Perhaps it was only a coincidence that he should appear here at the ultimate eligible moment; and then, perhaps _not_–

The time-slowing spell ended just as he alit at the top of the heap of wood; the flames instantly rose to greet him, enveloping him in a fiery aura – harmless, of course, now that the powers of Fire were at his command. It took a single stroke of the Reaver to cut through the bonds–

He caught the unconscious human as she was about to tumble down the pyre: the burnt legs could no longer support the weight of the body. Then, he carefully replaced the Reaver; and then, he picked up the body and began to descend down the pyre.

Flames jumped between the feathers of his outstretched wings; embers leapt off of them to the ground. From the sudden silence and the looks of fear on the faces of the closest humans, he deduced that his sudden incursion had produced quite the dramatic effect.

And very well, that: the humans had come there to be entertained. They had better _feel_ entertained now.

-------

He laid Zosha on the cold stones in front of the stake, and, without regard for the swarm of humanity in front, started to methodically remove the pieces of burnt cloth from the human's calves and hands. The scorched area of the body did not extend beyond elbows and knees, and that was a good sign; the vampiric regeneration which the human seemed to have inherited with his blood would take care of the rest–

(For a brief moment, he wondered about the phenomenon: he had almost automatically assumed that the human would receive certain vampiric powers from him – and she had; but the same had not applied to Eirene. His blood had Changed them both, but differently. What was happening here?)

The stench of cooked meat filled the air, irritating his sensitised nostrils–

The humans in front began to stir, as if they had been suddenly awakened from a trance; a murmur rose above the mob–

A figure landed softly between him and the bloodthirsty crowd. Eirene spread her wings and put up her Glyph shield; in the blood-red light of the fire, the green glow which enveloped her appeared to be almost black.

Most of the humans, especially those standing in front, immediately backed off on seeing the second inhuman creature of their lives within minutes. Some, however – either particularly brave, or, more probable, particularly inebriated – fired rounds of shots at the Hylden; she caught them all on the shield, but did not move to counter the attack, did not let herself be provoked; immovable, wordless, the Seer stood proudly, providing protection for him and for Zosha.

-------

In the privacy afforded them between Eirene and the pile of burning wood (_where_ had they found wood in this wasteland?), the human was slowly coming round. First, there was a minuscule change in her presence, in her mind; then–

Then, the grey eyes snapped open; then, they narrowed as Zosha recognised him; then, a look of pure hatred filled them and the human's mutilated face.

It was an expression with which Kain was intimately familiar: after all, he had seen it on the thousands of faces of his victims. He did not expect to find it, however, on the face of the one human whose life he had _saved_; and for the second time in as many days–

Zosha coughed, and then, attempted to speak; then, she coughed again, and then, attempted to speak again; this time, successfully – just as he was beginning to wonder why she hadn't simply used the Whisper instead–

"_You!_ What did you save me for _this_ time?" The voice, weak as it was, was nonetheless full of venom; or, at least, it was attempting to be.

Perplexed by the lack of gratitude – and more than a little annoyed – he replied, "For myself; or for later; choose whatever answer you can convince yourself to believe. What happened here?"

"What happened here?" The human coughed again, and then continued, bitterly, "I followed your advice, _that_ is what happened." She seemed to be oblivious to the fact that her hands and legs were already half-healed.

"And that was–?" An idea slowly formed in his mind–

"To kill my brother..." she whispered; and then, suddenly, words started to pour out of her. "When I have returned from the Village, I was given to understand that he denounced me in front of the Council as a vampire and a traitor. I denied the accusations, of course–

And then, he proposed a God's trial, an ordeal by fire, to solve the matter between us–"

"And you _agreed_?" Kain asked in disbelief.

"He _did_ offer me the first try," Zosha replied angrily; the resentment wiping out the last traces of weakness from her voice. "And I fired at him, and shot him dead. Except that–" Her voice faltered, as though she still could not believe what had happened.

"Except that he _returned_ to life," Kain finished for her. "And when he did, you learnt that he had a rather _different_ vision of ordeal by fire..." He looked to the stake and the pile of burning wood–

"An ordeal fit for a vampire, he said," Zosha's voice reached him; but Kain was already somewhere else, lost in thoughts. What _was_ the purpose of this whole pathetic spectacle?

"Excuse my imposition," he suddenly heard Eirene's voice, "However, there is someone here who would speak with you, Scion."

-------

The woman – Zroya, he recalled; Zosha's mother and the matriarch of the Citadel – was not alone, but in the company of several other humans; some younger, some older; all self-important, indignant and attempting to hide their fear; none to any success.

"What is the meaning of this–" the woman asked, and then, as if suddenly remembering herself, added, "–my Lord? Why this interruption in the execution of a sovereign order?"

A sovereign order: _that_ argument, of all, he had _not_ expected.

The matriarch was, of course, correct. In the accord he had settled with the Founder, he had formally and factually enfeoffed her: invested her and her descendants with the lands on which the Citadel now stood. That is, in return for homage and service, he had agreed to hold no more than nominal power in the city; to let the humans govern themselves autonomously in matters that did not concern him firsthand. The homage was to be eternal; the service – the blood tithe for his sons – was to end at the moment of Raziel's reappearance in Nosgoth–

At the moment the covenant had been accorded, these appeared to be rather favourable conditions. He no longer needed to consider the trivial matters of fodder for his sons whilst he awaited Raziel and the coming of his destiny; and, in any case, he had never held much interest in the matters of governing humans.

Right now, however, this presented a heretofore unexpected difficulty. Of course, it would be the easiest thing possible to simply break his word and the covenant, and deny the matriarch her autonomous rule–

"_Sovereign order_?" he asked in the end. "Hasn't your daughter told you that she now belongs to me?"

"She _has_," Zroya replied haughtily. "However, she has _also_ told me that you had chosen to break her ties to you–" she made a pause – "my Lord."

The woman clearly seemed bent on destroying her child, whether out of jealousy or misguided love for her male offspring–

He heard Zosha stir behind him. The daughter of the matriarch must have risen sometime during the conversation, and now, she probably wanted to do something pathetically heroic and stupid to mollify the situation–

A single shot resounded through the tense silence, and Zroya started to fall to the ground; and he knew that the woman was already dead–

"Mother!" he heard Zosha scream; but he paid the human no heed; already was he scanning the surroundings in the direction from which the shot had come. He did not even need to cast the Time spell to give himself more time: on a ledge above the scattering remains of the human crowd, he spotted a face – a face with a large hole in the middle of the forehead. _I fired and shot him dead. Except that he returned._

The man jumped down from the ledge, and disappeared among the fleeing humans; Kain looked back to the tableau in the foreground. Zosha continued her indecent display, hugging the corpse of the woman who, moments ago, wanted her dead; Eirene was watching them both with a hungry look on her face; Zroya's councillors had run away.

"Eirene," he called out; the Hylden tore her eyes reluctantly off the human to look at him.

"I will follow the assassin; the shot was clearly intended as a challenge to me. You must not go with me; this is a matter only for the Reaver. Instead, stay here, and guard Zosha. Zosha–"

The human also looked up at him from the corpse; and, in the red gleam cast by the dying fire, he could see that her face was now blank, emotionless, and that her eyes were dry and cold and hard; she was not crying, as he had feared.

"The southwest quarter," she said impassively, "Sava and his fedayeen have their residence somewhere there, I have seen him head there oft enough. I will gather the Council; when you have need for me, call for me."

Somewhere between his earlier dismissal of her and the current events, Zosha had lost the careful image of docile obedience she had earlier projected; he was not sure if he should allow this transformation to proceed any further.

-------

The previous night's fighting had not reached the south-west quarter of the city: there were no barricades here and the buildings were not scorched or chipped by dispatches from the Hylden rifles and the human guns, flamethrowers and assorted ordnance. Instead, the houses were covered with different, and, in many respects, more ominous, marks: figures-of-eight; primitive drawings of a Wheel and an Eye – signs which he had thought he had left for sure in Nosgoth's past, with Moebius' corpse and the ruins of another civilisation–

He drew the Reaver.

The attack started less than a minute later, with a single round of shots fired at him from a balcony above–

Instinctively, he turned into mist, and the bullets passed harmlessly through him; but already something else was heading his way: three of the self-guided Flays he had seen Zosha use.

They, too, passed right through him; but seconds afterwards, he could hear a screech in the air: the Flays altered their course and came after him again. He swerved sharply, and one of the Flays drove into the wall of a building, right under the balcony; but the other two continued their pursuit.

The Flay stuck in the wall exploded, bringing down the balcony together with the two humans inside it; they fell down to the street below, breaking their necks. Mid-flight, he raised his Energy shield; and then, hovered for several seconds in front of the wall on the other side of the street, waiting for the Flays to come–

Then, the second Flay was down; one more to go–

Another round of shots coming from a second balcony–

Something stirring on the ground below–

Another series of Flays from the roof of the building to the left–

The Flays scattering to follow his Mind effigies–

Shots coming from the ground–

An incendiary cocktail splashed against a wall–

The Flays following him again–

Caught in the crossfire, Kain cast the Time spell. He looked around: there were humans everywhere: above – on the rooftops; below – on the ground; and in front – on the balcony; all shouting, shooting and throwing missiles at him; and no less than five Flays were now heading his way. He concentrated–

A sphere of fire issued from the Reaver, enveloping Kain, expanding in all directions, immolating all it encountered: the humans and the Flays alike. Further and further it went, dispersing only far above and away from Kain–

The time returned to its normal pace. The humans caught fire; their warlike shouts suddenly turned into screams of anguish, and then died out, one after another. But the Flays continued unimpeded towards him–

Kain landed on the ground, and called to the forces of Nature. And Nature replied: a wall of Nosgoth's black plants, her razor-sharp vines, suddenly grew up all around him. The Flays hit it, one after another, and all became entangled in it; and then, one after another, they all exploded. One of the humans standing on the ground had been also caught in the vines; the explosion which killed him tore off one of his arms; the sharp scent of blood invigorated Kain's senses.

The fedayee stirred. Kain looked at his companion, further down the way–

She, too, had already gotten to her feet, and was already aiming her weapon at Kain. Up, on the rooftop and the balcony, the humans' war cries were rising in a crescendo–

In one swift move, the vampire impaled the nearest fedayee on the Soul Reaver. An anguished shriek pierced the night air; and the man's body went limp again.

-------

Waves after waves of humans, throwing themselves against him in a blind, suicidal rage – no doubt amplified somehow by the influence of the restored Pillar of Conflict... He hit their soft bodies with volleys of telekinetic projectiles; cut them with the Reaver; immolated them; throttled them with the vines that came to his calling; made them kill one another with the Hate spell of Conflict; as a wolf, he entered the cellars where some of them were hiding and tore their throats off–

And he killed; and killed; and killed; and each time he killed, he reaved the fedayeen's souls; the shrieks of Raziel's tormented soul imprisoned within the Reaver resounded time after time, time and again...

And then, all was silent; and he was alone.

-------

_I annihilated the cult, but its head remained at large. Sava was not among the dead; and I knew I would find him in some temple he erected for his gruesome master._

_To found such a shrine, the priest needed an easily reached subterranean chamber filled in part with water. In the Citadel, that could mean only one sort of place._

-------

After a brief search, he located an entrance to one of the many old waterways crisscrossing the Citadel; once a defence system against the vampires, now, as he was about to learn, they served mainly as sewers.

He descended slowly down the manhole. There was a small platform at the bottom, slightly raised above the surface of the dirty water; he settled down on it–

Outside, above, it may have been dark; the bright electric light illuminated only patches of the Citadel's streets. It was, however, a darkness familiar to Kain; an old friend which had accompanied him ever since his revival as a vampire; his finely tuned eyes penetrated far into it. But down here, in the sewer, the darkness was absolute: even he, even in the light of the Reaver, could see no further than to the nearest corner–

He changed his shape into that of a wolf – and regretted it almost immediately: the stench of refuse, however strong it had appeared to him in his usual form, was now a thousand times stronger. It hovered in the air; and, to the wolf, it had taken the appearance of a very bright orange colour, overshadowing everything else.

Or _nearly_ everything else: for, in the distance, there was a wisp of blood-red, still strong, though already dispersing–

He followed.

-------

He made his way through the sewer, leaping as a wolf from platform to platform: the ceiling in the corridor was so low that flying would constitute a hazard rather than an advantage. There were several turns; and then, the corridor opened into another, much wider passage.

The brick ceiling was also much higher here; and the current of the sewage water was much slower: the water was dense and murky, resembling mud in texture. (For a moment, he wondered if it would still burn him if he touched it; in the end, he decided not to make the test.) He shifted back into his vampire form, and flew downstream, in the direction where the blood-red trail led.

The main sewer, as he soon learnt, discharged the refuse into an underground river – one of the branches of the river on which the Citadel stood. At the conflux of the two, there was a large natural cave, and a small natural beach. The walls of the cave were almost completely hidden behind a mass of writhing tentacles springing from the water below; the beach was empty, save for a solitary figure, kneeling with its back to Kain at the edge of the confluence's water.

The vampire landed soundlessly behind the human's back and folded his wings.

-------

"I knew that I would find you here, with the rest of the filth."

The human started angrily to his feet, turning around to face Kain. "You–"

Here, up close, the vampire could at least have a good look at the fedayee. The family resemblance was definitely there: like all of his clan, Sava was short, pale, with dark hair and grey eyes – it was as though all colour had faded from him; or as if it had never existed in him in the first place; as though humans, like plants, needed sun to acquire colour, and etiolated in the sunless world. Sava's face looked, in short, very much like his sister's; and even the manner in which he was now defensively clutching his weapon, Kain noticed with amusement, was exactly the same as Zosha's when the vampire had accused her of being a Hylden spy.

A large hole marred the human's forehead – and now, Kain could see that the hole did not lie exactly in its middle; it was slightly off-centre, slightly to the right. Zosha's hand must have trembled slightly when she had shot her younger brother.

For, as it turned out, Kain's first impressions of Sava from the Garden of Mirrors: that the fedayee's voice was weak, almost childlike – reflected the truth: Sava was young. Very young, in fact, even for a human, and much younger than Zosha: only just past his childhood–

Of course, he was old enough to be a killer.

-------

"Silence, child," the vampire chided, "I spoke not to you, but to your master."

"My _master_?" Sava laughed. "My master has nothing to say to you, heretic!"

"_Heretic_?" This actually caught Kain's attention. "How odd to hear this epithet in the lips of one who boasts of your heritage, child."

The boy backed off a step under Kain's scrutinising gaze, and was now standing almost within the slow flow of the river. "My heritage?" he cried out desperately. "My heritage consists of centuries of humiliations sustained by generations of my family at your hand, vampire! My master offered me a way to _atone_ for my heritage–"

"You were not the first one to be offered this," Kain replied suddenly. He looked around the cave – to the mass of tentacles invisible to the human – and added, more evenly, "Your ancestors served me well, and for that, I had them well rewarded. Your master has you played for a fool; and what is your reward for your devotion, child? To be an exile, a friendless matricide, until the end of your days – however soon it comes?"

A grimace crossed Sava's face; but he said nothing.

Kain went on, "For your ancestors' sake, I will now make you a proposal; the same proposal that I had made your sister – and, if your memory stretched back further than a mere several centuries, perhaps _then_ you could _begin_ to appreciate the rarity of this offer. You need not die."

The fedayee's face twisted with rage. "I would rather die than join you!"

Kain laughed. "As you wish, child."

And the Reaver shrieked again as it devoured another soul.

-------

He cleaned the blade from the child's blood and innards–

"I see that you _do_ know the value of silence, after all," he remarked.

The booming voice of the Elder One replied smugly, "Why should I speak if _you_ plead my case well enough, Kain?"

"Good. I am tired of your voice already," the vampire replied curtly. Then, he added, as if in an afterthought, "You should treasure this soul, demon – and those of the other human fools; you will receive no more fodder from me."

If possible, the voice sounded even more self-satisfied than before. "On the contrary, Kain; I will yet receive _much_ more from you. And I will cherish those souls even more for the fact that, knowing that you serve me, you will still _want _to give me my due–"

"Your _due_?" Kain snarled, "I will deliver you your _due_ where and when _I_ so choose, demon. For now, I give you only _this_–"

Under the touch of the Fire spell, the tentacles above the water surface charred and withered; the water began to hiss and seethe, and Kain started to feel the pricks of hot steam on his skin; the place, he realised, may well explode any moment, like an overloaded steam boiler–

-------

Almost at the last moment, he teleported out of the cave to the square where the foiled execution had taken place. The place was deserted now; someone had taken away Zroya's corpse, and the fire at the stake had died out. The only islets in this darkness were the patches of light under the electric lamps–

"_Eirene, Zosha_," he called out into the night,"_To me_."

To his immediate surprise, _both_ of the women teleported in: another sign of the Change the human must have been undergoing–

Zosha had changed her clothes, and was now clad again in full camouflage garb, with her weapon by her side; next to her, Eirene glittered and glimmered in the cool electric light–

"Your brother is dead," he said bluntly to the human, and watched her face close in on itself; apparently, despite her earlier poise, she must have still harboured some lingering sentiment for her younger sibling. "If it consoles you," he added, "in the end, he chose his own fate."

"At least to the extent that he _could_ choose it," she replied, without much anger.

Kain started; he had not expected such depth of insight from the woman. He looked at Eirene; the Hylden withstood his glance.

"I see, Eirene," he said slowly, "that you have made your choice."

The Hylden said nothing; but she nodded acquiescence: one brief move of her elegant head. Kain turned back to the human–

"After your mother's death, the rule of the city falls by default to you, Zosha," he said. In the corner of his eye, he saw a grimace cross Eirene's alien face.

The human, on her part, seemed nonplussed. "Provided that the Council agrees, that is."

He could not believe that the human dared raise such a minor issue. "_Make_ them agree," he growled. "And after you do, your first order as the new leader is to be as follows: that every single human in the Citadel share your blood and the blood of your followers, under pain of death for those who do not conform. Where are your troops?"

Although clearly surprised by the sudden change of topic, Zosha replied matter-of-factly, "I left them behind, in the Village, with the captives."

Eirene interjected suddenly, "Captives?"

"Yes," Zosha looked at her curiously, "the Hylden captives; and for protection against–" the inquiring gaze shifted to Kain – "the vampires, of course."

Kain flinched, surprised. "_Vampires_? What vampires would these be?"

"Those of the Second Clan, from the north-east," the human replied. "We thought them exterminated with the rest, because they had not been spotted for some eighty years; however, just before–" hey eyes shifted back to Eirene – "the Hylden came, several victims were found in the Village, drained of blood; and as my previous detachment's orders were to–" Zosha paused, clearly unsure why her simple words attracted so much attention from both the vampire and the Hylden.

In the silence which fell, Kain's next word rang out loudly. "_Eirene_."

The Hylden's head crests stood upright; she was fully alert. "I will guard her."

With a note of reproach in his voice – although the Hylden's enthusiasm was laudable, she definitely should not have spoken out of turn – Kain continued, "Do; then, once Zosha's succession is secured, move to Avernus and fetch your own people." He watched, amusedly, how the Hylden's face changed with his words; her crests twitched, and even her wings moved of their own accord. "Make haste: we shall all meet at dawn at the Abyss."

-------

His lieutenants – for that was what in the end they were, was it not? – scurried away to their tasks. (He heard them discussing the matter of the prisoners before they disappeared completely in the dark streets of the Citadel: Eirene maintained that the captives would be critical to the success of her mission.)

He looked to the northeast. The high buildings of the Citadel obstructed his line of sight, of course; but somewhere beyond them, he knew, lay the Turelim lands; and within them, perhaps, he would find Janos Audron at last.


	13. Heart of Darkness

**Chapter 12**

**Heart of Darkness**

From the air, the abode of the Second Clan resembled a giant black snake coiled protectively around the massive smokestack which towered above the land of the Turelim. In the place where the snake's tail met its head lay the only two gates into the fortress: in the snake's maw, the way in from the world outside; on the tip of the snake's tail, the exit to the inner courtyard, a thin strip of ground which separated the building from the smokestack.

Turel had his throne room constructed precisely there, where the building was twice its normal width, in an additional storey elevated over the main body of the fortress; an odd choice, perhaps, given that it meant that it was even darker there than on the ground floor–

-------

On the face of it, the territory of the Turelim Clan appeared to be the antithesis of Avici: where Avici was permeated with a harsh, everlasting radiance, this corner of Nosgoth was equally filled with impenetrable darkness. The only light to pierce the opaque air came, against all common sense, from the ground, from the places where the craggy volcanic rock had cracked and parted to reveal the magma flow beneath. Devoid of light that was not searing fire, Turel's offspring had evolved to do without the former and to endure the latter: their eyes, useless to them, had weakened, while their hearing had much improved; their thick skin and burly build imparted on them some small resistance to fire. Their final unique feature, Kain recalled, was their proficiency in telekinesis–

Even now, one of the brood stood guard in front of the outer gate to the abode. Kain watched the creature curiously, mindful of the fact that even a hundred years before, some of these wretches had still retained command of their minds; they, alone of all the Clans. He wondered if it would still be so in the case of the guard. In the end, he doubted it: for, although on the face of it, the territory of the Turelim was the antithesis of Avici, in truth it resembled it; and the resemblances ran deep.

-------

_Madness stretched over the tenebrous land: the stale madness of the sorcerers of the Circle who had shaped this realm in their unholy experiments with the living forces of Nosgoth; the prolonged agony of my corrupt Empire; the abject surrender and despair of children and subjects abandoned by their father and ruler; and yet more._

_Elsewhere, Nosgoth might be healing already; but the heart of darkness stood still, in an ominous stillness which did not in the least resemble a peace._

-------

Kain settled softly on the ground in front of the sentinel vampire, and started to walk towards it; pumices and tuffs gritted under his feet, announcing his presence to the guard. Up close, he could see the Turelim better in the dim red glow of the lava flows: the emaciated form of its immortal body; the overgrown, sensitive ears; the sharp, angular features of its face, perhaps not too dissimilar from his own – after all, the mindless beast could even now claim a kinship with him, a thought which somehow enticed him even as it repulsed him – and, in the end, the blind eyes; and in them, shadows of the vampire's animal hunger and pain; for of emotion, of rational thought, there was not a trace–

The Turelim attacked: soundlessly, without moving the slightest bit from its post – in fact, without making a single physical move – it attacked: caught by surprise, Kain felt the grip of an invisible noose tighten around him, shackling him to the place where he now stood. Tentatively, he reached to break the bond; but, like all nooses, the more he tried to break free of it, the closer it bound.

Then, he stilled, and calmly awaited the guard's approach; he knew that the moment the creature struck at him in an attempt to draw his blood, it would be forced to break the telekinetic restraints.

-------

And so it was: the Turelim did, indeed, strike at him; and the strike did not land, because the moment Kain felt the invisible bonds slacken, he moved away from the path of the blow; and at the same time, he raised the Energy shield to protect him from further telekinetic assaults.

The Turelim growled – it was the wild, bestial cry of one who had long lost the gift of expression; then, something struck Kain's shield, but did not pass through; the sentinel vampire must have attempted to constrain him again. The Turelim growled again, somehow sensing the futility of its efforts–

Kain would not use the Reaver; even so, it was only a quick work with his claws before the Turelim's prone form lay spread on the ground. He knelt next to the unconscious vampire–

A drop of blood hit the bestial form; a terrible scream soared into the miasmata of pestilential darkness; a soul was released after millennia of bondage, leaving behind only a corpse resting on the jet-black ground.

-------

_There is no cure for death. Only release._

_For millennia, I had scorned Ariel's insight; I had desired no cure for my vampire bloodlust. I had ceased my search for it even as I had doomed the Pillars to their decay._

_Yet as only pure could I comprehend fully the extent of the Pillars' corruption, I could not appreciate the import of Ariel's words until now, that I carried the cleansing blood in my veins._

_I had the means to heal the taint of the Hylden curse and the former madness of my own soul in which the Turelim partook. But I could never turn living beings into vampires; every last legionnaire of the Clans had been raised from the corpses of fallen human warriors through the Hylden soul magic; and for that – for the death that came before the vampiric unlife – there would be no cure; purified, the Turelim's soul escaped the carcass to which it had been bound._

_And so, I need not have shed my blood for this wretch; I might as well have fed its soul to the Wheel with the Reaver._

_In the Citadel, the Elder One sought to humiliate me by forcing me to slay his cultists by my own hand; to knowingly provide him fodder; the impossible alternative was to suffer Sava to exist and scheme against me. Now, it seemed, I faced another choice; this time, a dilemma of my own doing, yet one whereof the demon had known before I did; and in which he must delight. For I could release the souls of the Turelim, strengthening him yet again; or I could leave them be; a thorn of corruption to spread its poison in the reviving tissue of Nosgoth._

_The land could, indeed, be saved; but her vampires could not._

-------

There was only _one_ vampire in Nosgoth who had never died before the Hylden curse bound his soul forever to his body; and this was the only vampire who could perhaps provide him with some clues to his destiny as the Scion of Balance; with some insight into the intent of the creators of the Pillars; with some understanding of the relationship between the ancient vampires and the creature that had been their god–

The vampire who had not yet showed himself; though by now, he must know he was expected.

The corpse of the Turelim guard lay forgotten; with grim determination, Kain walked the last few steps down the ruins of the ancient road; and thus, entered the stronghold of madness and despair.

-------

The outer foyer was just as he had remembered it: windowless as the whole abode was; dim, filled with the pestiferous gloom of the heavy, joyless air. Everything was fashioned in black, and so, nearly indistinguishable in the muted reddish glow coming through the thin plates of obsidian set into the walls by the floor. To the left were the corridors which led further into the ring-like castle; to the right was the set of stairs which led to Turel's throne room.

-------

_Turel's chambers were upstairs, but I would not find my son there. He had disappeared from the face of Nosgoth shortly after our last meeting, wherein I had spoken to him of his juniors' demise._

_This, however, did not mean that his throne room would be empty._

-------

He stepped further into the darkness of the antechamber.

And then, bestial forms emerged silently from every corner of the room: from before him – and from behind him; and for a moment, he could not help but wonder at how perfectly silent predators the children of Turel had become in his absence, if even he, another vampire, had not heard a sound–

Like the guard outside, they were all nothing but mere shadows of their proud, former selves; shadows made of the disease of their minds and souls and the starvation of their bodies: for there was no telling what they had fed on for the previous eighty years that Zosha had told him the humans had been free of them; or if they had fed at all. They were all wearing almost nothing; scraps of their onetime armours were fused with their flesh. And again, there was no recognition of their lord and master in their sunken and vacant eyes; but as they all, one by one, caught the odour of his blood-filled body, they rapidly became animated with animal frenzy; some even started to emit utterly uncouth grunts which did not resemble in the slightest speech, human or otherwise.

And then, suddenly, they all simultaneously attacked: and Kain felt a dozen telekinetic assaults strike the shield which he put up a split second before the first blow hit him; and then, it was again the time to kill.

He unsheathed the Reaver; there was no reason to refrain from using it now that he had learnt that his blood could not cure the vampires' disease; or perhaps, that it cured it all too well–

The Turelim, to give them credit, were worthy opponents, even in their current state; perhaps the noxious influence of the restored Pillar of Conflict lent strength to their rage and to their blows. They pounded him with their claws and their telekinetic powers; now attempting to strangle him, now trying to bring his shield down and beat him down with volleys of projectiles. Some had even, he discovered to his no small amazement, evolved the sort of fire telekinesis that he himself possessed; and when it became obvious to them that he would not sell his blood cheaply, used it ever more frequently–

Projectiles, fiery and otherwise, crossed the chamber in all directions; at times they hit their targets, and at times they did not; and when they did not, at times they chipped pieces off the walls and the heavy balustrade of the staircase. A particularly large explosion tore off the lintel above the entranceway to the stronghold, cutting that way off; another one hit the ceiling, and brought down rubble on top of everyone's heads–

And so, when the Reaver screamed for the last time and the battle was over, the hall looked very differently from what it had been before; and Kain saw that the some stray bolt must have hit the wall or the ceiling near the door at the top of the stairs; for a heap of rubble was now blocking the entrance to Turel's chamber.

There was, he knew, a second staircase, at the other end of the ring-like stronghold. He could, perhaps, teleport out of the castle and then enter it through the gate from the inner courtyard; instead, however, he raised his Energy shield yet again, and, Reaver in hand, crossed the threshold of the passage which would lead him ever further into the heart of darkness.

-------

Forth and forth he went, through the suffocating, windowless corridors, stuffed with the sluggish air of millennia; and as he went forth, he encountered–

Vampires; but what vampires they were! In the chaos; the corruption; the degeneration of Nosgoth, they were the most chaotic, the most corrupt, the most degenerate of all. He had called them a thorn, and this, in essence, they were: a toxic residue of madness in a healing land. Like lunatics, they prowled the corridors of the citadel, executing menial tasks allotted to them in time out of mind; tasks whose sense was long forgotten and which had in the meantime acquired all the meaningless of a ritual; and perhaps not even that; perhaps these vampires were now merely nothing but trained animals. At one point, he saw one of them attempt to operate an obviously broken stove, and catch fire in the process; and none reacted, and the vampire in question least of all; its skin, he noticed as he killed it, bore all the marks of previous burnings. The animal, it seemed, could not learn even through pain.

And so, he penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness, and encountered these creatures, solitary or in groups; and destroyed them all; ruthless as he had ever been, ruthless as he ever would be; _a fine successor_, he thought, _to the Sarafan_; to the Sarafan, to Moebius' cutthroats, even to these very vampires, who in the very same manner had once treated their seniors of the First Clan.

And when all were dead and his gruesome errand in this place was at last completed, he ascended the second ornate flight of stairs; that which led to Turel's throne room from the inner entrance hall.

-------

An apparition awaited him there, in the darkness of the chamber; an apparition which could have been Janos Audron – and again, it could very well have _not_ been him. It was only when the being spoke that Kain knew for sure that he was at last in the presence of the ancient vampire; for though Janos' shape was different, his voice had stayed exactly the same as it had been when Kain had met him previously, millennia ago.

"Greetings, Kain. You have tarried much in coming here," the creature said; and there was more than the slightest hint of reproach in its voice. Then, it added, "But at last you _have_ come."

"I had to take the long way," Kain replied. "Besides, you had the advantage of me, Janos: I had to search for you,while you knew where to find me all along."

The unspoken question hung in the air; but Janos – the creature that must have been Janos – ignored it. Instead, he said simply, "You have changed much, Kain."

Something of Kain's thoughts must have reflected on his face, because the Audron continued, in an oddly impassive, unconcerned voice, "So have I: the Hylden's words came true–"

If it were possible for any living being – a vampire – to be constantly on fire; to burn eternally and neither feel pain nor be by the flames consumed – the appearance of such a creature could perhaps approximate what Kain was facing now. In the darkness of the room – in the darkness of this whole place – Janos stood out in sharp relief: a living torch, from the top of his head to the tips of his wings to the tips of his talons, a fiery shape which only barely resembled the vampire whom it had once been.

Janos _was_ wearing the Wraith Armour, just as Kain had suspected; but the flames from the uncovered parts of his body leapt over the breastplate, obscuring the shadow of the armour with their light; the shadow and the irregular shape on it: the shape that could only be the Nexus Stone. A scabbard, enveloped by thin threads of flame, hung suspended at the vampire's waist; and Kain knew without looking that it concealed the Flame Sword; a fitting blade for such a creature.

Perhaps the only fixed feature in this mutable, fiery shape was Janos' eyes – but even they were now changed: instead of the vampiric yellow, they were the colour of copper and molten gold–

"– And so has the land," the vampire finished. "It reminds me," he shuddered lightly: a ripple moved through the fiery body – "of the _other_ place. You have killed my firstborn." This disjointed statement was definitely not a question.

"_You_ have imprisoned _mine_ for eternity in this sword," Kain retorted, taking the Reaver off his back. For all he knew, the veracity of this statement may have well been wanting; but for what it lacked in accuracy, he would make up with conviction.

Janos' eyes lit up at the sight of the blade. "The Reaver! But– Raziel– your son–" For a moment, there was silence as the vampire digested the news.

Soon enough, however, the flames in Janos' eyes died out. "But you are wrong, Kain," he said impassively; as though having assimilated the revelation, he had deemed it unimportant and unworthy of his further attention, "It was not my doing, but," a grimace twisted the fires of his face, "the Hylden's."

Janos' indifference to news of Raziel surprised Kain; but another part of his mind was already taking up the new information. "The Hylden's?" he repeated; but there was, after all, only _one_ Hylden who could possibly fit this picture. "_Maat's_?"

At this, Janos laughed. "I see that you are familiar with the story of the Traitor," he said. "Yes. On our God's orders, she was allowed to escape, to enchant the blade with her heretical– her _sacrilegious_ soul magic which she thought would benefit the defender of her kind. She was mistaken, of course: both on that and on the reality of her escape. Vorador killed her when she was no longer useful; and _you_, I gather, used the weapon to defeat and imprison her champion." The flames of Janos' face reshaped themselves as the vampire added coldly, "_Good_. With Raziel within the blade, the Hylden have lost, even if they do not know it yet."

Though he was careful not to show any of it, this speech more than surprised Kain. And more than by the Audron's ignorance: for the ancient vampire apparently knew nothing either of Vorador and Maat's long later history; or, much more importantly, of the murals hidden within the Spirit Forge – the murals which unanimously proclaimed that it was not the vampire champion who were to battle the Hylden champion, but rather the Scion of Balance who were to fight and defeat them _both_ – and so, Raziel had been as much the vampire's hero as the Hylden's–

(Though, he thought suddenly, only the least charitable of souls could call what had in fact happened Raziel's _defeat_–)

In short: more than by Janos' ignorance of all these facts; more than by the sudden certainty that he would not receive his answers here; that Janos knew no more of the destiny of the Scion of Balance than Maat had; that he was as misguided, as lost in an erroneous interpretation of the prophecies, as all others, Hylden or vampire, had been–

(And yet, he thought, _someone_ must have created the murals in the Spirit Forge. _Someone_ must have known, must have seen, that it would be neither the vampire champion nor the Hylden one who would be the Scion–)

More than by all that, Kain was stunned by the ancient vampire's callous rejection of Raziel. He _knew_ that his lieutenant– his son– in the end, his ally and his partner– had felt an inordinate affection for Janos, having borne the brunt of it when Raziel set himself on reviving the vampire; and he had automatically, and perhaps erroneously, assumed that the fondness was mutual–

And yet, perhaps he should not be so astonished: were he to be in Janos' place, and knowing only what Janos knew, his reaction would, of course, be identical. Still–

_Still_.

"Yes. The Hylden," he said at last. "Tell me, Janos. How did you escape them?"

The vampire did not respond, as though he had not heard the question; instead, he turned, and walked a few steps towards the left wall, the one which gave onto the smokestack. This, as Kain noted only now, his attention fully occupied by Janos before, had a large hole in it; as if blasted telekinetically by Turel in some odd, mad bid to escape–

"Fly with me, Kain," he said wistfully. "It has been so long since I last flew with another."

He agreed: for the moment, what else was there to do?

-------

Two pairs of massive wings – one black as the eternal night around them, the other brilliant with the hellfire of Avici – stirred the stale, noxious air as the two vampires flew up the height of the smokestack; and then over it, through the smoke it was spewing out. Janos was not satisfied until after they had crossed the layer of the putrid fumes: but then, suddenly, he stopped mid-flight. And for all it looked like, he actually alit on the smoke: no longer flying, but standing on it, as if it were solid ground–

"I see that you are bringing the Hylden to Nosgoth. That is good," he said, touching the Nexus Stone affixed to his breast.

Kain started again on hearing this; but this time, the surprise soon passed as Janos finished, "They are much weakened now, and unsuspecting of us. When we strike, we shall destroy them easily, once and for all."

That Janos had apparently made a decision in the name of them both suddenly irritated Kain. "I have no intention to destroy the Hylden," he replied, purposefully folding his wings to repeat the older vampire's earlier trick. It turned to be much easier than it had looked.

"_No_?" Janos asked, looking at him sceptically.

Kain considered the matter. "No," he replied at last. "Like the humans, they have proven willing to serve me."

"Ah, the _humans_!" Janos suddenly became agitated; and given his former calm, the contrast was all the more striking as he asked, impassionedly–

"And do you intend to make _them_ equal to us as well? _Them_, amongst whom we should walk as _gods_?"

"I have been a god. It grew boring quickly," Kain replied curtly.

Janos was clearly disappointed by his answer. "And so, you are bent on empowering the ignorant. The undeserving."

Kain snorted; for some reason, the older vampire seemed himself bent on treating _him_ as a fledgling yet to be taught the fundamental facts of existence. It was as if Janos, despite all his assertions to the contrary, failed to notice that he was no longer talking to Kain's younger self–

"At least, they were not the ones who _chose_ ignorance over knowledge," he said. "If the _vampires_ had not declared that the Hylden be unspoken, they would not have managed to surprise _me_ by their return–" He decided not to breach the topic of the Elder One just _yet_.

A ripple passed through the fiery face; then, Janos turned his eyes away from him, saying, "We had our reasons."

"_Reasons_?" Kain demanded. "What _reasons_ were there for a behaviour against _all_ reason?"

Janos started to speak, "Le coeur a ses raisons–"

"–que la raison ne connaît point," Kain finished. _The heart has its reasons which reason knows not_. An old adage; and perhaps true – especially when one thought of _this_ dark, impenetrable, pitiless heart – but one which, as all old adages, did not say anything. "What _else_ do you have to say, Janos?"

"In part," the old vampire continued, unruffled by the interruption, "this must have been, of course, because we did not expect the Binding to be disrupted so soon... It must have failed after the Sarafan–" He shuddered again, and Kain knew what memory evoked this reaction: that Janos was now reliving the moment when the warrior-priests had taken his heart– "It must have taken time before the Pillars accepted the human-born vampires as their new masters–"

"Still," he finished suddenly, "even Vorador and his kin had been better than the miserable wretches I encountered _here_. I hope that the Wheel accepts them; I must thank you for releasing them, Kain. Our God will be pleased."

"_Your_ God, Janos–" Kain strained to keep composure; this conversation was taking a decidedly wrong turn; or perhaps it had taken a wrong turn long before; perhaps even the moment it had started – "is nothing but a parasitic fraud."

Janos looked at him calmly. "Yes. He said that you would be telling me this."

"I have proof."

"And _this_. But, Kain, at last – at _long_ last, I have heard His voice. He has spoken to me; He has forgiven me; and He has brought me release from the land of exile. What proof can you give me that will nullify these truths?"

Flames danced in the copper-and-gold eyes of the apparition before him; hellish glow enveloped it like an affectionate parent would cradle a child; and, not for the first time during this talk, Kain wondered if the madness of Avici had touched only Janos' body; if, at some level, the madness of the heart of darkness did not resonate with some darkness deep within the Audron's soul.

-------

Perhaps taking Kain's momentary silence for lack of argument, Janos resumed his talk–

"He has told me to await you here– to lead you to those bastards of your soul which must be put down before the land can be restored. And now, we shall destroy the dissenters as you have destroyed the sinners; and then, we will finish the deed and be ourselves reborn–"

At last, Kain thought, the mystery of Janos' long silence was explained; and what a mundane explanation this was: the Elder One simply wanted to delay this meeting as long as possible; to have him – _let_ him, for never it be told that the task was to him a repugnant one – slay as many as possible, Hylden, human or vampire, before he realised that with every kill, he was making his enemy stronger. And, _once_ he realised this; once, for the very first time in his vampiric existence, he found a very good reason _not_ to kill, the Elder had forced him to confront those that he _must_ destroy: first Sava, and now the Turelim–

Amplifying the death toll and satisfying the unending hunger: it was all there ever was to it. And yet, like a fool, he had fallen straight into this, after all rather vulgar, trap; had followed his nature of a killer to the only conclusion, the only solution, it had offered.

Yet this was a matter for another time; for now, another issue was more pressing: for, perhaps for the first time during this conversation, he found a way to turn Janos' words against him, to appeal to the Audron with his own arguments–

"_Reborn_?" he asked, "As _humans_? The ignorant? The _undeserving_? You said that yourself, Janos: to them, _we_ should be as gods. You chide _me_ for making them our equals; yet you would _become_ one of them yourself?"

For a moment, he thought that this appeal to Janos' sentiments worked; something akin to a shadow of a doubt twisted the fiery face; but then, the grimace disappeared, and the face became smooth and peaceful again; set in the unwavering affirmation of the true believer.

"No," the Audron whispered, "No. What penitent would I be if I let myself doubt so easily – if I rejected the just punishment? And you–" the ardent eyes suddenly bore into Kain, and, for all the millennia of his experience and for all his might, the Scion of Balance had to force himself not to take a step back under the force of this fierce gaze – "_You_. If you refuse your destiny; if you would not fulfil your duty – then you are no vampire; no saviour; and the Reaver is not your due. Return it this instant, _heretic_–"

_Heretic_. It was distressing – no, it was _infuriating_ – to see the ancient vampire reduced to this level: to the level of a human whose life had been so much shorter; who was so less experienced, so less wise in the ways of existence. And yet, for all of Janos' feeling of superiority, in the end, his epithet of choice was the same as Sava's; in the end, he was just as willing to delude himself–

"And who are _you_ to decide who or what I am, Janos?" Kain growled. "I have earned the Reaver with _my_ blood and my _firstborn's_ sacrifice. No; I shall keep it."

"Then," the ancient vampire replied sadly, soaring into the night air, "you leave me no choice, Kain."

-------

They fought; above the smoke layer, and below it, and inside it; but never for a moment, Kain noticed, did Janos leave the ring of the Turelim citadel; never for a moment did he leave the heart of darkness; though certainly he could; he could teleport to anywhere in Nosgoth, and leave Kain to seek him out again, for days, years or millennia, if he only so wished–

But he did not; not even after Kain had hurt him much; it was as if the Audron did not want to leave this place; as if he were bound, by his will and his desire, to it and to its corruption; as if its insanity gave strength to his own madness–

And so, they fought: fought with steel against steel, the Soul Reaver against the Flame Sword, in a grotesque parody of all the ancient prophecies which had always presented one of the clashing heroes possessed of the former, and the other, the latter; and they fought with magic against magic, the magic of a puissant Audron of the ancient vampires against the magic of the Scion of Balance and the seven restored Pillars–

In Avernus, Maat'ash'Eirene had told Kain that as the Hylden were like Earth and Water, vampires were like Air and Fire. And that, perhaps, was more than a graceful metaphor: because it was with Air and Fire that Janos now fought. Powerful tornadoes tore through the stale, opaque air, upsetting that which had not been moved for centuries; fire bolts and walls spread through the smoke, illuminating briefly the eternal darkness.

And from the deepest, darkest shadows around them, Janos called to his aid the odd, shadowy creatures which Kain had so often fought in the past of Nosgoth–

Kain also gave Janos his due: to Janos' tornadoes, he replied sending out his Air shock wave; to Janos' attempts to set him on fire, he ignored or answered in kind (achieving the same result with both methods: the fires in which Janos burned protected him from any other fire). The telekinetic bolts Janos sent towards him, he half-suffered, half-caught on the Energy shield he raised time after time; the shades, he set one upon another with the Hate spell of Conflict–

Still, in the end, the two of them would be no more than evenly matched – because even the Reaver was not as useful as it should be, with the peculiar magic of the Nexus Stone guarding Janos against it – but for one power.

Janos could not affect time.

-------

In the slowed time, Kain caught Janos, by that time already much weakened by the fight, in the kinetic shackles, and carefully manoeuvred the ancient vampire onto the top of the smokestack.

He could easily destroy Janos now; rip the Nexus Stone off the vampire's breast, and feed his soul to the Reaver, sending it straight to the Wheel. He even suspected that Janos would not have much against it–

Moreover: essentially, the vampire was a useless, and even awkward, burden to him now: it was obvious that he knew less than Kain himself about the prophecies; as equally obvious as that, while the humans and the Hylden might be willing to serve Kain, Janos would never do so: at most, he would accept Kain as an equal; it was the same issue which eventually drove Kain to destroy Vorador–

Nevertheless.

Holding the fiery creature with one hand – more steadying it than restraining it, really – he was about to draw his blood with the claws of the other one, when another thought suddenly struck him–

Raziel had not needed blood to Change _him_, had he?

Perhaps all that was needed was his presence and his willingness to Change another.

Perhaps it was finally the time to stop thinking in terms of blood; to be something else than kin to one of the sad creatures he had destroyed in the land below.

-------

Spellbound, Kain watched as the fires of Avici slowly extinguished and gave way to a familiar, blue-skinned, black-feathered figure; and suddenly, he recalled that this was not the first such transformation Janos had sustained; that once, a long time ago, he had been nothing but a caged beast; and yet, he had recovered.

The copper-and-gold eyes were the last to go; but, at last, they too gave way to the familiar yellow–

And then, a sudden change came over Janos' features: a change anything approaching which even Kain had never seen before. It was fascinating: it was as though a veil had been rent. On the Audron's face, he saw the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror; of an intense and hopeless despair. There was no telling what terrible visions the Nexus Stone sent to him during that supreme moment of complete knowledge; but then Janos cried in a whisper – cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:

"The _horror_! The _horror_!"

He took a few steps, each of them wobbly and unsteady like a newborn's; the Flame Sword dropped out of his weakened hand – and fell all the way down to the earth, far below. Then, Janos suddenly looked at Kain, with a strangely sharp, alarmed gaze, and said:

"Kain– We must wake– We must tell the truth–"

"Tell?"Kain pressed, "Tell _whom_? Janos!"

"The others–"

But Janos did not finish; because at that moment, a powerful lightning discharge tore through the air – and struck the smokestack, ripping the whole structure into shreds in a massive explosion. Apparently, the energies they had both released during their fight had stirred enough the great masses of air and smoke–

When the bolt struck, Kain was already in the air, having escaped at almost the last moment; but Janos, weakened by the fight and disoriented by the sudden revelation, had not moved in time. His body, bloodied and battered, lay on the black, cracked ground below when the smoke from the explosion subsided; but that was nothing to the old vampire, of course; his body had suffered worse– much worse–

Except that now, of course, the Hylden curse no longer bound Janos' soul to his body.

-------

And so it was that, when the Scion of Balance held his final council with the last of the proud Audrons of the vampire kind, naught a word was spoken; not even the words of farewell; for there was no time for that, not even for a farewell; all there was, was the sharp spike of pain in Kain's mind; and the few disjointed Whispered words:

"...under...ruins...oblivion..."

And then, end; and a great nothingness.

And the Wheel claimed another soul.

-------

Kain stood over the body, still trying to make sense of what had happened; of how his long search for Janos had been brought to an abrupt, unexpected conclusion; of Janos' madness, healing and final epiphany; of how feats of his own will could have been so easily nullified by something so random, so trivial – so _pedestrian_ – as a mere phenomenon of nature; finally, of Janos' cryptic advice–

–when something heavy fell on his arm, melting his skin in the place where it hit and almost making him hiss out in pain. He looked away from the body; and for the first time saw and heard what was happening around him.

The bolt which had struck the smokestack had been only the first of many; now, all around him, the whole sky, as far as the horizon, was repeatedly illuminated by flashes of lightning. Rain was starting to fall in large, heavy, cold, ash-filled, acidic droplets; it was one of those that had hit him and broke him out of his reverie.

And this, he knew, would be no ordinary rain, the likes of which he had learnt to resist long before; no ordinary storm. The fight; the disruption of the stale, congealed order here, in this place, in the heart of darkness, had set off a chain reaction; and now, repercussions would echo throughout whole Nosgoth–

He tore off the Nexus Stone from the shadow of the Wraith Armour on Janos' body; because, even if he did not know how to use its powers in full, he knew one who well could; and then, with a heavy – no, _not_ with a heavy heart; for, after all, he had _no_ heart, as best he knew; the only heart he had ever had had belonged to the one who now lay lifeless on the ground – he sought to escape the heart of darkness with a word and a spell:

"_Sanctuary_."


	14. The Destroyer of Worlds

**Chapter 13**

**The Destroyer of Worlds**

There had been demons here. But now, there was only the rain.

Rain: a staccato of raindrops hitting the Pillars' platform, the lone isle on the lake spreading where the fallen Sanctuary had once stood; with the occasional discordant chord, an acciaccatura of a thunder somewhere in the northeast–

Rain: huge, heavy drops of water which, however cold, inflamed Kain's skin wherever they struck. And yet, the wounds healed almost immediately and the pain was nothing more than a passing nuisance; and so, he barely paid them heed, lost deep in the thoughts which this forlorn scene, so terribly, impossibly distant from both the human Citadel and the tower of Avernus, evoked.

------

_Janos Audron was dead; and before he died, he had given me naught of what I had expected of him: no advice, no insight, no counsel; nothing but three words: "under – ruins – oblivion"._

_Yet this lack of direction did not affect me as it perhaps ought; indeed, paradoxically, it may have liberated me. It was true that I might never learn what the creators of the Spirit Forge had intended their Scion of Balance to achieve; but did it matter? I was possessed of free will; and what is destiny to a free-willed one?_

_Nothing but an empty word: henceforth, I would make my own destiny, and follow my own counsel._

_The first step was clear. There was power still to be harnessed from Nosgoth: two final Pillars to be restored._

------

Power. Yes: power. And the instruments of power.

For a moment – for a single moment – he had allowed himself to forget who he was: a ruler; a king; an Emperor. He had decided to save Janos Audron, from himself as much as from anything else, and in spite of all the awkwardness it would produce; all the while aware that, in the end, Janos would never serve him; that he would probably insist on treating Kain as an equal; that it would be all over again as it had been with Vorador–

But a ruler has no equals; only servants, and tools, and instruments of power. The price he pays for his elevation over others is the eternal solitude he suffers. And Kain had always understood this well. He had accepted this price long ago. Why had he forgotten this, even for a moment? Why had he _let_ himself forget this?

It had been, in a way, fortunate, that the events in the heart of darkness had unfolded the way they had: that what he, in his moment of weakness, had lacked the resolve to finish, had been finished for him by accident and pure chance–

And, of course, deep in the recesses of his unconscious mind, he had always remembered these truths, even when he had momentarily forgotten about them: for his first instinct had taken him here, to the Pillars, to this desolate place of power; not to the human Citadel, where his human servant now was; nor to Avernus, where the Hylden must have by now arrived–

A _human_ and a _Hylden_! What–

But at this point, Kain's meditations were rudely interrupted: another wave of demons: black ones and red ones and blue ones and green ones, materialised on the platform; there, and all around him, on the ground in the shallower parts of the lake. The vampire smiled unpleasantly: the Elder One must be getting really desperate, if he resorted to such vulgar attempts–

Leisurely, he called to the powers of Nature: black vines grew out from the bed of the lake, entangling and strangling the demons which stood in the water. Then, it was the turn for the time-slowing spell; and the Mind illusions which served him as decoys; and the Energy shield which protected him from telekinetic attacks; and for all the elemental powers he commanded; and, of course, for the Soul Reaver–

He had just beheaded one mammoth creature; then, pounded another with telekinesis; then, reversed his grip on the Reaver and stabbed the demon behind in the massive chest, letting the sword work its unholy magic – when, suddenly, he laughed. This– this was _it_: the wonderful simplicity of the kill which warded off all melancholy and malaise–

(–which had kept intruding on his life ever since he had left the Spirit Forge in the past of Nosgoth–)

It was inebriating; intoxicating; exhilarating. He moved from demon to demon, cutting off the giant limbs and heads; telekinetically pushing the fiends off the Pillars' platform and into the abyss of the submerged chamber below; setting them aflame; reaving their souls. A heap of bodies had amassed on the platform, simply because he had not the time to clear them all off; and now, the arriving demons must appear on top of the cadavers of their predecessors–

And the demons _kept_ coming; there was no end to their procession: blue, and red, and green, and black; they all ended up dead at his hand; their green blood liberally spilt onto the platform, diluted in the water of the constant rain–

And then, suddenly, he remembered: there was _more_; more power in this place, if he only willed it.

------

He flew up; far up, far above the results of the slaughter he had just carried out, far beyond the range of the demons' telekinetic projectiles, far above the dark clouds which poured down the deluge onto the unsuspecting, old, tired land; into the utter silence of the starry sky and the seven restored Pillars. Here, at last, he could concentrate enough–

And so, he called the last two Pillars' powers to himself; and received them; and accepted and suffered the terrible agony of the Change; both of himself and of the land.

------

As he plunged back towards the ground below – aiming to cover the whole distance in one rapid, breakneck dive – he suddenly realised that the rain no longer melt his skin. He did not care much: the absence of pain, however sudden, was to be expected; he would accustom to it quickly. More important were the other powers he received with the Pillars of States and Death; and the demons beneath would serve as fine subjects for experiments.

------

The Water spell froze up water.

It would not be, perhaps, that interesting a discovery had Kain not been standing virtually in the middle of the lake when he cast the spell; and perhaps even less so had it not been raining at the time. As it was, however, the surface of the lake froze, enclosing the demons: each demon in its own personal, beautiful, and, above all, _solid_ ice cage. It would take seconds – the precious seconds which always mattered the most in a fight – before the cages would release the demons from their hold.

And the large, heavy drops of water suddenly became large, heavy hailstones which pelted the demons from the sky. It was rather amusing to see the disoriented giants bombarded by the pellets, even if, in all actuality, they weren't that much harmed by the hail–

One of the hailstones hit Kain's own left wing, and he very nearly hissed out in pain again. Now, he could, perhaps, assume his mist form until the Water spell stopped working–

On an impulse, he decided against it: instead, he reached to the newly-acquired power of States.

An odd sensation crossed his body: a tingle and a shiver. He felt his flesh and bone solidify and harden; become tough and impervious as iron and stone. It seemed that this power of the States generated the exact opposite of his mist form: gave him all the sturdiness and solidity of a golem. Of course, where golems were slow and clumsy, _he_ had lost none of his vampiric agility–

Another hailstone hit his wing, in almost exactly the same place where the previous one; but this time, Kain felt nothing. And that was just as well; for there was still one more power to be sampled.

Death.

------

Kain watched calmly as one of the red demons nearest him curled up, literally stoned to death by the hailstorm he had created from the rain with another spell of Water; as soon as it was dead, another of the appeared: a blue one.

_Not_ one of cobalt-blue lightning demons he had fought for so long; the _other_ blue one.

He had almost forgotten of their existence, these demons he had only seen twice, in the nameless Hylden city far in the south, a long time ago; but suddenly, he remembered them: those demons that had been immune to almost all the powers he could then set against them–

It would perhaps be interesting to see what Death could do to one of them.

------

Hovering in the air, just outside of the demon's reach, with his body strengthened by States and protected by Energy, he called out to the power of Death. Instantly, he sensed a difference in his telekinetic powers; slowly, savouring the feel of the moment, he shot out a projectile–

An arc of lightning leapt from him to the blue demon; for a moment, it held the beast in a shimmering cage, seeping energy out of it; and, given the anguished screams Kain heard, doubtlessly causing it terrible pain. The vampire laughed again: he suddenly recalled how, when he was still a fledgling, he had witnessed Mortanius destroy Anarcrothe, his fellow Guardian, with just such a power, and in this very place. He sought another demon, and cast the lightning projectile again; and again; and again.

But this was _not_ yet the end, he suddenly sensed as he watched several more of the powerful blue demons teleport in to replace the fallen. There was _still_ more.

He flew up slightly to avoid the demons' attacks; and then, waited. He did not know what it was precisely what he was waiting _for_; but he waited.

Power surged within his bloodstream; the power of all nine Pillars acting in accord; the power of a whole realm concentrated within one body. He let it be; until, at one point, it reached some odd, hidden threshold whereof he had not been aware until it were crossed; and then–

–he released it.

It was as if he had called to the storm which now raged in the northeast of Nosgoth; and as if the storm had listened to his call: giant lightning bolts started to tear through the air around him, unerringly hitting the demons on the ground. His sensitive ears were deafened by the roar of the thunders; indeed, they _were_ destroyed by the sound waves spreading through the air – destroyed, and, in the same instant, healed completely by the Pillars' powers; only to be destroyed again. He hovered in the air, unable to move, in the middle of this debacle; for the moment, his powers were completely spent. Untouched by the lightning, he remained in his place, witness to the paroxysm of power of a land that was no longer old and tired, but ancient, and terrible, and set on vengeance. And nothing more than a witness: because, to his dismay and consequent anger, he discovered that he could not control the immense raw power he had released; could not even force it to desist; he could only watch – with eyes which, too, must be constantly destroyed and remade – all that was happening around him: the eerie, deadly blue-white light–

All in all... it was a rather sobering experience.

And then, suddenly, it was over; all was silent; there were no more demons, and no more lightning; only the rain, and an odd metallic aftertaste lingering in the air. Kain surveyed the ground below: the untouched Pillars platform covered by the mountain of charred bodies; and even more heaps of bodies amassed in the lake; all this carnage, some of which he had wrought with his sword; but some of which he had wrought with nothing but a _thought_–

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds," he quoted softly, settling down on the mount of bodies. There was more weariness than triumph in his words.

"Yes. You have learnt the Death that comes of Water," he heard someone reply from behind his back; from behind the Pillars.

Kain started; he had not expected to receive an answer; not now, not here, not in this place. And the voice– the voice was so odd– and so oddly _familiar_–

And the _words_–

"_Perun_," he growled. "The Pillars are restored. Shouldn't you be back in Avici?"

"The previous time, there was sufficient time to cast a rather intricate curse before the Pillars wove their spell in full," the fluctuating voice of the Hylden reminded Kain calmly from behind and below.

"And you, I presume," Kain turned round to face Perun at last; the Reaver, as always, kept firmly in his hand, "intend to repeat this feat?"

The Hylden prince had been leaning casually against the Pillar of Balance; now, he straightened up; at least inasmuch as his liquid, mutable form allowed him to straighten up. "No, Scion," he said simply, "I have come here for my own death."

Kain studied him closely for a moment, noting the use of the epithet: apparently, Perun had either learnt or realised certain truths since their previous meeting.

"What a peculiar sentiment for one of your kind," he said at last. There wasn't much spirit in the taunt; indeed, he wondered if he had meant this to be a taunt at all. Perhaps not, he decided.

"What else remains?" the Hylden laughed mirthlessly, "The half-sister will not aid me, of all; and I have not the strength to wait alone in Avici until the passage opens once more. The Pillars are restored, Scion: you have won. My last resort is to die. And I wish to die in fight."

"And so, you have come to me." Kain stated flatly.

The Hylden bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment, "To the only one who has ever come close to defeating me. The one who _is_ to defeat me, if Eirene did not lie."

"Eirene lied," replied Kain mechanically. "But you – you have come here to ask a favour of me," he continued evenly, "And yet you keep on insulting me, treating me like some thug whom you can hire to kill. Give me one reason – _one reason_ – why I should satisfy your wish, Perun. The alternative seems – ever so amusing."

The Hylden looked at him curiously; then, for a moment, he seemed to survey the pile of demon bodies on which Kain was standing. Then, he laughed again; and this time, it was a much more natural and honest laugh than before: it sounded slightly like a rapid mountain brook.

"I see," he said, "that I have committed a grave error in speaking to you, Scion. I should have simply attacked you instead. _Then_ you would have no compunctions about killing me. But what _reason_ can I give you that could not be deemed an assassin's payment? A bit of advice, perhaps? Very well: do not trust the betrayer. In the end, she will betray you as well, even if even she does not think so now."

This time, it was Kain's turn to laugh. "Do you take me for a fool who needs lessons in how to rule, Hylden – and more, presume to _teach_ me one?"

"And when the half-sister does betray you, Scion," Perun continued calmly, "remember this: it was not royal blood that gave substance to Avici. We have suffered an eternity without a Queen; and at least _some_ of us have learnt to value merit over precedence in the Hylden nation. You will soon discover that Eirene's word might carry less weight than she thinks; the people will not forget whose daughter she had been, and that when the time of banishment had come, her mother was not with her people, but with their enemies."

For a few seconds, only the patter of raindrops broke the silence as Kain considered Perun's words. To what lengths, he wondered, the Hylden was willing to go to spite Maat'ash'Eirene, if he was giving _Kain_ weapons against her? For certain, Eirene would not be amused after she learnt that Kain grew aware of precisely how much she had aggrandised her importance.

There were, truth be told, many things Kain still didn't know about the Hylden society: the fighting he had done against them, both now and in Meridian, the brief trip to Avici, and the equally brief acquaintance with Eirene, had served only in the way of an introduction. Perhaps, he suddenly reflected, only of the ancient vampires he knew less–

But one thing was certain: he had seen Avici, and he had been left impressed by what he had seen. To survive in that place must have taken ingenuity – and good leaders: because for all the resourcefulness of all Hylden technicians, for all the unanimity of all Hylden subjects, in the end, nothing would have been achieved without efficient leadership. And this led him straight to the unhappy, if inescapable, conclusion: that, however loath he was to admit it, Hash'ak'Gik and his brood had been, if anything, good officials–

And, obviously, when he defeated the Elder One and began to restore the land, he would need precisely such individuals in charge–

Or he could simply throw out and let the Elder One devour another useful tool.

------

He sheathed the Reaver with a decisive move, folding his wings tightly, so that only the hilt of the sword was visible. Then, he folded also his hands. This would take some work, he thought; and the previous two times had not been exactly what could be termed _successful_.

"It is most remarkable what you say, Hylden; and an apt fee for your death, if you still wish it. If you do not, perhaps this will interest you: I am in need of aides. You know you cannot hope to defeat me; join me, instead. If you serve me well, your blood feud with Eirene shall not concern me."

"No. It will _abet_ you," the Hylden prince replied, and Kain felt his eyes involuntarily narrow: Perun was perhaps _too_ intelligent for his own good. "But you speak the truth, Scion: I have witnessed your power. I–" a brief pause here, as if the Hylden were finding the next words difficult to pronounce; at last, the silver eyes glittered haughtily, and the words came out rapidly, "submit and defer to your judgment. Do unto me as you will."

As an honour, this was certainly not the finest Kain had ever received; but, at least as far as he could tell, it was sincere. Therefore, in an appropriately formal, solemn voice, he replied:

"Then, Perun, I accept you as my liege man and lieutenant."

------

Kain had just stepped down from the pile of bodies onto the only free space on the platform, into the triangle between the Pillars of Balance, Nature and Energy where Perun had been standing during their conversation, when the Change he had willed in the Hylden started.

For the next several moments, the vampire lord devoted himself to studiously cleaning the Pillars' platform of the waste which littered it – the bodies of the demons killed either by him or in the lightning storm he had summoned. This was a rather straightforward task: he simply created a series of powerful shock waves which pushed all the corpses off the platform and into the water-filled fissure below. The rain would wash off the green blood.

Then, he turned round to examine his latest handiwork.

The Changed Perun looked very much like his half-sister he so detested; there were the membranous wings, the head crests, the vertically-slit eyes. He was even roughly the same height as Eirene. There was only one difference: while Eirene's scales were all in different shades of green, Perun's were silver and grey; only his eyes preserved the Hylden emerald. For a moment, Kain wondered if the difference was sex-linked, or if it reflected the different affinities of the two: her for Earth magic, his for Water. But there was no telling it at this moment.

"Eirene is in Avernus, with your people," he told the Hylden; although, of course, Perun had somehow already known this.

The Hylden acknowledged the implicit order with a nod. "And what shall you do, Scion?" he asked.

"I?" asked Kain, more amused than angered by Perun's cheek. "I am, apparently, to seek oblivion," he said wistfully. "Or the _ruins_ of it. Unless it is all no more than a colourful metaphor," he added, after a moment.

The Hylden's head crests rose and fell. "No," he said, in a strange voice, "No. It is most certainly an actual place." At Kain's bemused expression, he added, speaking as if he were reciting the words of some ancient, obscure incantation:

"Lanthanesthai. Lethe. The Citadel of Oblivion."

He looked sharply to his right, between the Pillars of Nature and Conflict. Kain's eyes followed–

There, far in the northwest, beyond even the human Citadel, lay what he had first known as Malek's Bastion, and only later as the ruins of Lanthanesthai, the ancient capital of the vampires. And somewhere – somewhere _under_ it, if Janos had been right–

"You will _not_ go to Avernus, Perun," he said suddenly, "You are coming with me."

"And where are we going?" the Hylden asked, bemused.

Kain's own voice sounded alien to him as he replied:

"To where the children of fear lie buried, awaiting."

------

Then, there was only the brief afterglow of teleportation magic; and then, even this was gone; and all that remained was – the rain.


	15. Sous les Décombres de l'Oubli

**Chapter 14**

**Sous les Décombres de l'Oubli**

It was dark in the shrine; as dark as it had been the previous night, when he had been here with Zosha; when he had performed his first act of healing on a living being–

(Had it really been only the _previous_ _night_? _Yes_, he confirmed, slightly surprised, it _had_–)

And so, just like the previous night, a conjured light hovered in the air as he examined closely the walls of the shrine, searching for – he did not know for what. A hidden panel. A secret switch. A lock of some kind, perhaps. Anything.

When he had heard from Perun that by the 'ruins of oblivion' Janos had mentioned he might have meant Lanthanesthai – Malek's Bastion – _this_ place had immediately come to Kain's mind. True, the shrine was not directly _under_ the Bastion – quite far from it, in fact: to the northwest of Coorhagen, or, at present, of Coorhagen's ruins – but one reached it by entering a Warp Gate under the old Citadel.

The shrine must have been initially constructed expressly as a place for the vampires to commune with their God. All such places Kain had seen – as, in fact, all places where he had seen the fraudster himself – had access to water; and it clearly had been impossible to achieve this on the high plateau of Lethe. Hence, he had not been that much off the mark when he had replied to Zosha's question about what this place had been, even if he had not yet known the full history–

The question now was if it was also something _else_.

Many things in Nosgoth _were_. The Pillars: an impressive monument, a true work of art – yet, at the same time, a powerful weapon which by itself had determined the outcome of a war which, if Eirene were to be believed, had gone on practically since the dawn of time. The Reaver: first forged specifically to kill Kain (he had no proof of that; but the circumstantial evidence was rather compelling), but now converted into his own weapon which he was to use for – for _something_, anyway, according to the nameless creator of the murals in the Spirit Forge; and what he _intended_ to use it for was perhaps something else still–

In any case, this place was important enough that the previous night, demons had been sent to protect it against him. He still remembered his shock when he had to face the group of them after he had spent near all his powers on the demons that had been here before, those which had killed off the Hylden troops–

Of course, he mused as he carefully inspected one mural after another, the Elder One – or, for that matter, Janos – could have also sent the demons to kill Zosha and prevent the alliance between him and the human Citadel; the beasts certainly had seemed to go straight for the human then. Or, as, at that time, Zosha had been possessed by Eirene, they could have arrived to prevent the alliance between him and the Hylden–

The possibilities were, if not endless, many; and the true course of the events would probably never be discovered. Not that it mattered, for the most part.

(At this point, he spent a few seconds deliberating if he should perhaps check on Zosha's and Eirene's progress. In the end, he decided against it. They were his lieutenants. He had entrusted them with important tasks. True, they _were_ rather complicated tasks, but if the human and the Hylden possessed some elementary competence, they should manage to fulfil them without his supervision. In any case, it were better that he should learn _now_ that he must search for new lieutenants than that he learn this at some critical moment in the future.

And of course, it might be better to discover this now, before he grew much accustomed to the women; although, somewhat to his dismay, they _already_ seemed to be growing on him – he would probably regret having to kill either of them; or, worse, both–

Thinking of the two he had left in the Citadel made him think, in turn, of Perun. He shot a look at the Hylden: Perun was standing in the middle of the chamber, clearly perplexed about what was happening.

Why _had_ he decided to take the Hylden with him? It had been such an odd impulse.)

Nothing.

No hidden panels, no secret switches, no enigmatic locks. He was searching in entirely the wrong spot; evidently, this could not be the place Janos had meant.

Unless–

He looked at the circular pond in the middle of the shrine; at the low stone wall which surrounded it. There were – _scratches_ on it; scratches which, at first, he had even failed to notice; and then, had failed to recognise for what they were–

Now, he realised what it was he was looking at.

Runes.

-----

The runes were of the Blood Script, and that was a good thing; but the text was written in one of the old dialects, one that had been in decline even before the time of the Sarafan; and so, Kain understood only single words of it:

"...bury...wait...goodwill...God...come...us..." he read out slowly, simultaneously translating, as he circled the pond. It was not much. It was, in fact, distressingly little. Perhaps it meant that he was in the correct place; perhaps not.

The surface of the pond was still frozen, but that was not much of a problem. He took the Reaver off his back, and, with a powerful thrust, jammed it into the surface of the ice. The ice cracked; and then, suddenly, it melted completely. (In the end, Kain was not even sure if it had been the elemental power of Fire or Water which had acted; but this was another of those things which simply did not matter.) He retrieved the Reaver–

Perun, who had approached the pond curiously when Kain had started reading out the text in the flickering light of the spell, now offered, "Should I go scouting ahead?"

At this, Kain started. "No," he said, pulling his right hand out of the ice-cold water which, for a few moments, he had been aimlessly combing, "Follow me."

-----

They both plunged into the dark, winding tunnel; after a few failed tries, Kain discovered that swimming was not that much unlike flying; plain for one with at least basic control over one's limbs.

On and on they swum through the passage cut in the rock; Kain constantly alert. But there were no monstrous eyes here, no tentacles; apparently, with the loss of his faithful here, the Elder One had moved to warmer climes.

At last, the passage winded upwards; some more swimming, a bit of telekinesis to break through another ice layer – and then, at last, they–

-----

–surfaced, and Perun instantly felt how cold, how unbelievably cold it was here: for one who, like he, had spent all his life in the heat of Avici, in all probability fatally cold. There was no telling how much further he could proceed: his armour, metal scales on leather, gave him only the most basic of protections against chilly air. (Chilly water was a very much different matter, of course: the whole distance from the shrine he had spent in what he had come to think of as his _other_ State, and so, the armour had not mattered at all.)

It was also dark here; and again, he cursed the eternal glow of Avici for the weakness of his eyes: he could not see a thing. But in this, at least, he was vindicated: apparently, he was not the only one who was virtually blind. The Scion released not one, but several enchanted lights into the air; and when a _vampire_ could not see–

They were in another cave, much larger than the one from which they had come: even with the spelled lights, he still could not see its ceiling. There was a stony shore nearby, he suddenly noticed; the Scion was already swimming towards it, with calm, regular strokes. He followed.

The next thing he saw was a large pile of wood. For all it looked like, someone – someone very considerate – had taken a lot of trouble to put it up into the perfect ladder for a bonfire. The wood was very dry: it lit up from the first fire projectile the vampire cast at it. Perun felt instantly better.

The third thing he saw was the door.

It was just next to the pile of wood, set in the stone wall of the cavern, apparently closing off a part of it. It was, all in all, a rather ordinary door: made of cast iron, unadorned save for some fittings, two-leaved, unquestionably vampire in origin; sealed. The extraordinary part about it was the seal.

It was most definitely a seal rather than a lock: there was no keyhole, and no other visible means to unlock it. And it was in the shape of what he knew had once been one of the sigils of the Wheel of Fate. (It definitely helped his memory that he had seen one or two of them in the shrine they had just visited.) A Wheel with nine spokes, and an Eye in the middle–

The vampire – his _lord_, whom he owed allegiance, he corrected himself – studied it closely for a moment; then, he looked around the massive cave. For a moment, it seemed as if his face could not decide if it should show irritation or fatigue; in the end, it settled for an expression of resigned resolve.

"Wait for me here," the vampire ordered, and disappeared in the darkness. Perun decided not to protest. There wasn't anyone to protest to, anyway.

-----

A moment later, as the fire thawed his frozen brain and he could think again, the Hylden started to piece together what had just happened.

Obviously, there was something behind this door which the vampires wanted to hide from the rest of Nosgoth; if the Scion's odd words be true, these were – the vampires themselves? If so, it would be terribly odd if the way they had come here was the only one. As far as he remembered, vampires who had been resistant to water had been always very few–

Perhaps, he decided, the vampires had caved in the other entrance after coming here.

In any case, the vampires certainly hadn't wanted this place to be found. And so, they would have wanted to make sure that, even _if_ found, no one would manage to open the door. (An analogy with a certain door in the underbelly of Avici inevitably presented itself.) On the other hand, it was possible that in certain circumstances – let's say, if a Scion of Balance happened to cross nearby – they _might_ wish this door to be opened. Hence, of course, the need to design an appropriately complex lock.

So, the Scion was now off to solve some offensively large, complex puzzle which the vampires had invented to make sure that only the right person would cross the threshold of enlightenment – and, given that the curse had made them virtually immortal, they had a _lot_ of time on their hands to amuse themselves this way – and he, Perun of the Hylden, had been left here for the meantime like some useless baggage. He did not mind. At least it was warm.

-----

Some time later – he did not even know how much later; time flowed weirdly in the darkness – he felt a surge of magic in the air. He looked at the door: one of the spokes of the Wheel was now shining with the symbol of Nature. Apparently, the Scion must have activated – or deactivated, depending on how one looked at it – one of the nine parts of the lock.

For a moment, Perun thought of his new liege lord. Kain had frankly surprised him at the Pillars: the ceremonies of homage, the Hylden knew, had been invented specifically for the purpose of providing a way of escape from the inevitable bloodshed: an honourable defeat. But it was strange to know that someone still remembered them – more, still found use for them – here, now, in this time and age–

It would be fascinating to see the half-sister's face when he finally confronted her.

There was another surge of magic, and the rune of States lit up. Whatever mad labyrinth the vampires had created to test the mettle of their champion, the Scion was clearly making his way through it, in a rather good time.

-----

The ninth symbol activated, and at the same moment, Kain appeared in front of the door. The Eye of the seal had disappeared; in its place, there was now a keyhole.

The vampire carefully inserted the Soul Reaver into the keyhole, turned it ninety degrees to the right, and pulled it out; and then, finally, the door opened.

The inside of the second part of the cavern was, oddly enough, _not_ dark. As Perun crossed the threshold, he realised why: scattered all about the floor there were odd crystals which gave off dim, muted light – but still strong enough to see clearly the scene in front.

(For a moment, he wondered if the crystals had been shining all the time since the vampires had created this place, or if they had activated only when the door had opened. Probably the latter, he decided.)

The chamber was shaped like an amphitheatre, with low, wide tiers surrounding a circular space in the middle. Several set of steps joined all the tiers; they were now standing at the top of one of them.

Everywhere Perun looked, there were bodies.

Bodies: lying directly on the stone ground, packed one closely to the next, as closely as the massive black-feathered wings allowed. He approached one: it was a female, perfectly preserved – whether due to the cold air or the curse which had granted the vampires immortality, there was no telling.

The female was lying on her side, in the foetal position. Her eyes were open: an expression of blissful anticipation still reflected in them. There was a flask in her hand, and an odd purple pigment at her mouth; a pigment which, Perun supposed, might have once been purple froth.

He looked around: and now, that he knew what he was looking for, he found it everywhere: small flasks or cups, sometimes still held tightly in hands, sometimes lying next to them, released in the final spasm of death. The vampires must have shut themselves in here, and then taken poison in a vain attempt to escape the curse cast on them; unaware that even after death, they would remain chained to their bodies, and unable to leave this place–

And now, of course, the Scion would attempt to raise them and heal them. Perun wondered if the vampire was even aware of how complex the magic he so casually used was; or what levels of power it demanded. The vampires, he mused, must have delved deeply into the magic of Death after their forceful dissociation from the Wheel–

In any case: if Kain managed to raise the vampires, but not heal them, they were potentially both facing a thousand mad, bloodthirsty creatures. If he managed to raise _and_ heal them, they would only face a thousand vampires.

Neither perspective was especially appealing to the Hylden.

-----

The Scion was already at the bottom of the chamber, inspecting the solitary figure which lay there. Perun cursed himself silently for letting himself be detained, and hurried to take a look as well.

Oddly enough, for all it appeared, the body belonged to a human.

The young man had human hands and feet – it was easy to see this, as, just like the vampires, he was barefoot. He had no wings, and his skin was white, not blue; a halo of shoulder-long, black hair enveloped his head, nearly indistinguishable from the dark rock on which he was lying and the black leather of the armour he was wearing. There was a sword by his side – a sword, but no scabbard: and Perun could see that, though not much adorned, the sword looked extremely sharp. It might even be a Serioli creation, he mused, remembering the name of the ancient weapon smiths passed on to him in tales–

The face of the human appealed to him somehow: it had that hidden charm which transcends even the barriers of species and forces one to call itself beauty. Slightly slanted eyes; high cheeks; a strong chin; sensuous lips, even if, at present, pale and bloodless – and, of course, the face's perfect symmetry–

There was a certain predatory expression on the young man's dead face: an expression which, until this point, Perun had never seen in the faces of the humans he had met in this land; not even in the faces of warriors. He touched tentatively the man's lips; a pair of elongated canines presented themselves. Ah. So, after all, this was a vampire's body. A human-born vampire's, but still a vampire's.

The Scion was standing over the body with a rather curious look on his face.

"Wake up," he said, in a strong, even voice; and Perun felt the tingle of the powerful magic of Change pass through his body on its way to its destination; so powerful, it hurt; hurt so much–

"Wake up," Kain demanded harshly of the room in general. "Wake up," he repeated for a second time, quietly, almost pleadingly–

And then, Perun could not help but watch in awe as the body of the vampire under his hands Changed.

-----

Blue specks appeared on the vampire's white skin; blue specks which soon became the germs of Change as they quickly grew and connected with one another. The fingers and the toes fused into sharp talons: three on either hand, two on either foot. The leather of the armour snapped with a loud crack as two massive wing bones pierced it, soon to grow out feathers–

Finally, the yellow eyes opened. For a moment, they looked at Perun disbelievingly–

Then, the vampire attacked, quick as only a vampire could be; the sharp sword stopped only a finger's-breath from the Hylden's neck, held, as it were, by the blade of the Soul Reaver.

"He is with _me_, _vampire_," Kain said calmly.

Only now did the vampire on the ground appear to take notice of him at all. "With _you_?" he said slowly, with a hint of an accent which reminded Kain slightly of Janos'. Turning his head to look at Kain, he asked, "And _who_ are _you_?"

At this, Kain felt a sudden urge to laugh.

To laugh: at the confusion and complete ignorance of the other vampire; at the utter absurdity of the situation; but, above all, to _laugh_, laugh like a madman, because he suddenly realised that the words which described him best at this point, the ones that best replied to the human-born vampire's question, were the ones with which Raziel had taunted him in Avernus: _The mighty Kain. The Scion of Balance. The would-be saviour of Nosgoth._

_Yes_, he was mighty. _Yes_, he was the Scion of Balance. And _yes_, he _would_ be the saviour of Nosgoth; whether Nosgoth wished it or not. (And, for all it looked, Nosgoth did _not_. Ever since he had returned to this era and discovered that even the Pillars had turned against him, he had to constantly fight, every step of the way, to beat the land into something at least barely resembling submission.)

And, then, all of a sudden, he knew the answer to the question which had been bothering him earlier: why he had taken Perun with him on this trip–

(In the corner of his eye, he saw that, availing himself of the vampire's momentary distraction, Perun had moved away from the crossed blades and was now standing up–)

It was to show these – these suicidal cowards, he thought with sudden distaste; for the moment, he had no more tender feeling for the vampires than he had for, for instance, humans – that things would henceforth _change_ in Nosgoth.

After all, he mused, he intended to destroy their God. And he was beginning to think he might know how to achieve this.

Of course, the human-born vampire probably wanted a somewhat _simpler_ answer.

-----

"Someone who has much better rights to ask the same question of _you_," he replied carefully at last, sheathing calmly the Soul Reaver. For all it looked, he noticed, irritated, the vampire wasn't listening to him: instead, his eyes, wide with recognition, followed the blade–

Only when the Reaver vanished on Kain's back did the vampire actually begin to take stock of the rest of the situation in which he now found himself: he finally noticed, with a low cry of surprise, the talons on his hands and feet, and the bits of blue skin between where the leather of the armour ended and the powerful claws began. Then, when he started to pick himself up from the ground, he immediately encountered the hurdle of the giant wings which so completely upset the centre of balance of the body; he managed to recover equilibrium at almost the last moment. That he managed to do this at all was, in itself, no mean feat, and spoke of many a year of a warrior's training–

As the vampire stood up, Kain noticed that he was still clutching the hilt of his sword firmly – as firmly as possible, that is: the sword had obviously been forged for a human hand – though he lowered its tip purposefully, in a belated effort not to appear too aggressive–

"Tiens," he said at last, looking to Perun, and then, back to Kain, "Je m'appelle–"

Then, he blinked, and suddenly switched idioms. "I am called," he said slowly, unsurely, "Shiva. I am– I _was_–" he corrected himself; and then, perhaps understandably under the circumstances, he lapsed back into his native tongue – "j_'étais_ Gardien de Conflit. Le remplaçant," he added at last.

Then this was the replacement, human-born, Guardian of Conflict, one of Malek's predecessors–

Perun's head crests rose in astonishment. "Qu'est-ce qui est arrivé ici? Comment êtes-vous–" he began to ask.

At this, it was Kain's turn to be surprised. His own knowledge of the old dialects had been perfunctory, at best; he had simply never found much use for them. To discover, all of a sudden, that they _might_ have some use–

And that both the vampire – _Shiva_, he forced himself to remember – and Perun spoke the same tongue; one _he_ barely knew–

To say that it was _unsettling_ was to understate the matter inordinately. But it was, in a way, already too late: Perun had already spoken out. Shiva's eyes lit up when he heard the familiar words; he launched into a rather lengthy speech, one of which Kain understood next to nothing. He _thought_ he heard– But it could _not_ be–

"Perun," he said in the direction of the Hylden, trying to appear au fait, as always; though he felt his control of the state of affairs slip more and more each subsequent moment. "If you understand what he is saying–"

"Yes," the Hylden replied, again in that strange tone he had used at the Pillars, when he had told Kain of Lanthanesthai. Suddenly, Kain felt even worse about the whole matter: it was as if the Hylden had been _choosing_ to aid him, doing the things he did out of his own volition; for the _second_ time, at that–

"He was the second replacement Guardian," Perun started to interpret, "after Balance. The third replacement was," he hesitated for a moment, "Mortanius–"

At this, Kain started out of his thoughts. So, the first three vampire Guardians to fall had been–

But he already knew this, did he not? That mural in the Citadel of Tears–

"This Mortanius and–"the Hylden faltered again in search of a name.

"_Moebius_," Kain growled: even the memory of that bastard smarted, "They refused to share the curse, and staged a rebellion. What of it?"

"The rest of the Guardians decided to remain in the Citadel; but Shiva was chosen to take the majority of what remained of the vampires here, so that they would die of their own hand and join their God, and not be killed and resurrected as Mortanius' toys." The Hylden shot an understanding look in the vampire's direction: he could certainly sympathise with the sentiment.

"Still, they left an escape route," Kain commented.

"Yes. Apparently, for _you_, Scion."

At this, Shiva suddenly animated, "_Vous_ êtes– _You_ are the _Scion_ of _Balance_?"

There was some disbelief in his voice, but Kain could see that it was quickly fading: the human-born vampire was now looking at him slightly differently; with much more respect. _Good_, he thought. Apparently, Shiva was not a fool; and a pretty face and quick reflexes was not all he could boast of. Now, Kain must find out if he was not _too_ intelligent; as Perun at times appeared to be.

The vampire shot another question, this time in Perun's direction; the Hylden's head crests rose again. "Oui," he answered, to which Shiva replied with a much longer question, with frequent, furtive, looks at Kain, who stood at the side, mildly amused by the evidently heated exchange. His initial fears of a possible future conspiracy and a mutiny in his ranks had, for the moment, subsided. In fact, he thought, it had been a very good thing that he had decided to bring Perun along; otherwise, communication would have been much more difficult. He wondered for the moment: if he Whispered to Shiva–

"He asked at first," Perun started to translate after a moment's deliberation, "if I was 'the Unspoken'. I assumed that he meant by this the Hylden–" he hesitated.

"You were correct," Kain affirmed. The foolishness of the Guardians in this matter–

"And then, he asked what happened to the Pillars and the Binding if I am here; if you decided not to complete it?"

"_Complete_ it?"

"Apparently," the whole of Perun's body indicated that the Hylden knew no more than Kain of the whole matter, "it was never completed, for some reason. Actually," he mused, "this makes sense. If some spell which should have been concluded to seal off Avici from Nosgoth never was–"

"This would explain how the Hylden managed to escape in the first place, after Janos suffered," Kain finished, more to himself than to Perun. He wondered how much there was still in Nosgoth which he did not yet know. It seemed that at every step, there was something new for him to learn and take into his calculations–

Yes, things in Nosgoth rarely were what they seemed to be at first glance; and rarely were they only one thing at a time.

Shiva was clearly still waiting for Kain's answer; the vampire deliberated for a moment what it would be, trying to find the correct words. He was tired, he discovered unexpectedly. When he had gone with Raziel into the past – and later, when he returned to this era – he had not quite known just on what mad chase he had embarked. _Raziel_ had been in his mind the one destined to do – whatever. Save Nosgoth. _He_ had only, perhaps for the only time in his existence, wanted a supporting role, a second chance at being a proper Guardian of Balance–

And now, here he was, at the end of all time, and _still_ learning; learning about all those things _he_ needed to know so that _he_ would save the land–

"Tell him," he told Perun at last, "that the Pillars are standing, but that I have not yet completed the Binding. Tell him also," he added, "that things are very different now than they used to be in Nosgoth; and that there is much change yet to come."

They would oppose the change, he knew. They; and the humans; and the Hylden. They would oppose it as much as they could.

Fortunately, he did not need their consent.

-----

Perun was translating Kain's speech for the benefit of the former Guardian of Conflict, when Kain abruptly became aware of the multitude of shadows all around them. The large auditorium was full – not of bodies, but of living, breathing creatures, all listening in silence to the exchange that took place on the amphitheatre's scene.

Oh. The vampires. He had raised and healed them all, after all.

He looked at the sea of faces. Some of them must have been worthy people, he surmised: intelligent, or beautiful, or even, perhaps, just and good, if these words still held any meaning in Nosgoth. But, for the moment, he could not find in himself a single emotion towards them; he simply did not care for them. They might be his people, in theory; but in fact, they were complete strangers.

Perhaps Janos had been right; and he was a vampire no more than the human he had once been or the Hylden whom, according to Eirene, he might be if only he wished.

-----

It turned out that there was no second entrance to the cave; the vampires had, indeed, collapsed it after themselves. That was not much trouble; a new opening was soon created in the ceiling of the outer cave.

The vampires filed out through the exit, taking wing, one after another. They would all – all save Shiva – go to the ruins of Lanthanesthai, where, it was agreed, they would establish a temporary camp.

Shiva had been human-born; trained, not born, into the worship of the Elder One; he would be easier to convince and reason with. He had once been a Guardian of Conflict; and though this had been a long time ago, and he had surrendered the scabbard which had been his binding token when he had parted with the rest of the Guardians, he still had quick reflexes and considerable fighting skills.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle by the time the three of them finally left the cave, flying out only after all the others had left. Kain watched how a perplexed expression on Shiva's face turned suddenly into happiness; the vampire raised his hands and turned his head up, drinking in the rain's water, like something he had missed – missed for a long, long time; centuries, perhaps.

Apparently, Kain mused, in the healing process, he had imparted his own immunity to water onto the vampires; and, for one, at least, that sufficed for happiness.

Simple minds, simple pleasures: ça va sans dire.

-----

The Pillar of States was working as it should; when they arrived at the Abyss, the sky was clear. One could even call it a rosy-fingered dawn, if one insisted.


	16. The Battle of the Abyss

**Chapter 15**

**The Battle of the Abyss**

Eirene and Zosha were already waiting for them on the southern of the two rocks which bordered the edges of the Abyss; as the three of them approached, Kain noticed that Shiva's gaze was fixed on the human, as if he were wondering what Zosha was doing there. In a way, Kain agreed with the vampire: among the five of them, the human, the grey-on-grey human, terribly stuck out. She and Eirene were, perhaps, like the Nosgoth that had been and like the Nosgoth that would be: the first, grey and mutilated; the second, proud and self-confident–

Clear, bright rays of the morning sun played on Eirene's scales; she could have been seen from far away, and, Kain thought, the three of them must have been similarly visible. Eirene would know, then, that Kain had another Hylden with him.

The three of them settled on the rock; Eirene approached the other Hylden with an inquisitive look on her face–

"Half-sister," Perun nodded coolly.

"_Perun_," she gasped, looking at Kain with an expression which hovered between betrayal and admiration. But she recovered her wits almost immediately, and asked, looking at Shiva, "And the vampire?"

It was clear that Shiva's appearance had not shaken her as much as Perun's.

Understanding what was demanded of him, the vampire introduced himself curtly, "Shiva," and looked, in turn, to the human.

"Zosha," she replied; then, looking at Perun thoughtfully, she asked, "You were the one who led the attack on the Citadel, weren't you?"

"Yes," he replied immediately, without a trace of embarrassment.

A shadow crossed Zosha's face. "There is– an armistice," she said reluctantly. "There were some prisoners. Few. They are now in Avernus," she said, casting a look in Eirene's direction.

"Then, I believe, all matters have been satisfactorily resolved?" Kain asked, finally drawing the attention of all to himself. He had refrained from speaking until this point; he had been curious how the four would manage to sort out their little enmities on their own.

"In the Citadel, yes," Zosha bowed acquiescence.

"My people are on the plains east of Avernus. The tower is sealed and secured," Eirene added, casting a meaningful look in Perun's direction. The Hylden visibly stiffened at the mention of _Eirene's_ people.

"Good," Kain said curtly. "And Avici?"

"Inaccessible. The last portal closed just after I left with the final group."

"How much time do you need to open a Nexus Stone Gate there?"

At this, Eirene looked at him uncomprehendingly. "A _Gate_? Why would–"

Deciding not to pursue the matter, she said, "I don't know. It took Father a century, at a time when the Pillars were very weak–"

This was certainly _not_ the sort of answer Kain had expected.

Eirene continued, thoughtfully, "I can do it within several hours, perhaps, if I have help. _Her_," she said, pointing to Zosha, who started. She was not the only one.

"I need someone competent in Dimension magic," Eirene said, by means of explanation.

"Then it is settled," Kain said. Then, he turned to the other Hylden, "Perun, I need you to raise the waters of the Abyss."

Just like the previous request, this, too, initially met with a mixture of incomprehension and disbelief on Perun's face; and, again, they quickly gave way to thoughtfulness. "It _is_ feasible," he said, "But not for too long."

"Only for several hours," Kain replied, "As long as it takes Eirene and Zosha to create a portal."

"Ah," Perun replied. "If they hurry–" He shrugged, clearly indicating that if Eirene would do her job, _he_ would certainly do _his_. Then, curiosity overwhelmed him, and he asked, in a way, the same question that Eirene had not finished before, "What _is_ there?"

To the surprise of most, it was Zosha who answered.

"A– God? My brother told me that he found his God when he looked into the Abyss–" She looked at Kain tentatively, as though she could not believe her own words.

Eirene started. "_He_? But he was under the Pillars–" She turned her head to Perun again; and, for the first time, there was no antipathy in her voice as she communicated, curtly, "The Wheel of Fate."

Perun nearly spat out, "The _Wheel_–"

At the same moment, Shiva, who, until this time, had not spoken at all – so that Kain wondered if he even understood what was being said – moved.

"The Wheel of Fate?" he asked curiously, "_Le Dieu Ancien_?"

"Yes," Kain affirmed. "But he is no God. He is a demon, a fraud; a _parasite_ who sows conflict and reaps death. He feeds on the souls of the dead – and, for a long time, he had been very weak. He had starved: there had been no fodder for him in Nosgoth save the humans of the Citadel–" He interrupted for a moment, and watched how the expression on Zosha's deformed face changed into one of pure disgust and horror–

So did, nearly simultaneously, the expression on Perun's countenance. "But with the recent invasion–" he started to speak; but did not finish.

"With the invasion," Kain finished for him, "with Sava's cult, with the demon uprising within your ranks; finally, with my own acts – he has feasted. We have supplied him with much fodder with our petty wars."

"Just like in the old times," Eirene sighed; Shiva nodded seriously.

There was a moment of silence; and then, Zosha said simply, "He must die."

-----

Kain started at the sound of the human's voice. It was the same cold, calm voice with which she had told him in the Citadel where he would find her brother, sealing Sava's death.

(From the look of it, he was not the only one surprised. Perun was looking at the human closely, as if he had only just comprehended something; possibly, his own army's defeat in the Citadel.)

He waited a moment; he felt rather relieved. A major hurdle had been overcome: the words had been uttered, and none had protested. They were all committed; the issue was now not _if_, but _how_ they would assist him.

Aloud, he said, "He cannot die. He isn't only immortal; he is eternal. Even if he is killed at one moment, he may exist the following one. Or, possibly, he cannot be destroyed _at all_, because he has _always_ existed."

"But if he is banished to Avici through the portal, and the Pillars seal space _and_ time after him, forever–" Eirene mused. "It will have to be done fast, though. Very fast."

"But," Perun asked suddenly, "Eirene said that he was under the Pillars–"

Four heads turned in unison towards Kain. He sighed internally: the Hylden really _was_ too intelligent for his own good at times–

"He is under all Nosgoth – or rather, wherever under Nosgoth he wishes to be. He is limited by space no more than he is by time. However, the Abyss is his seat of power. Here, he is the strongest."

He prayed that they do not ask him why he thought so. He was guessing. (Of course, it was a rather _educated_ guess; but a guess nonetheless.)

"While Eirene and Zosha prepare the portal," he explained further, "I will endeavour to weaken him. He will leave the other spots to defend this place." _I hope_, he thought; nothing but hope remained now.

"I will go with you, Scion," Shiva suddenly said, in the slow, unsure manner in which he spoke whenever he was not using his native dialect.

Kain looked at him. "Yes," he said thoughtfully, "I may need you."

-----

Zosha and Perun remained at the southern edge of the Abyss; Eirene flew over to the northern edge. The Nexus Stone, supported by Eirene's telekinetic powers, hovered in the air mid-way between the Hylden and the human, over the very centre of the giant whirlpool.

Kain turned to Perun. "Begin," he ordered.

A moment later, the maelstrom slowly began to uncoil; then, the curtains of the waterfalls rose; all the waters joined together again into a shimmering funnel – which, in fact, also whirled, but in the opposite direction. The funnel was much larger in girth than the initial whirlpool: it enveloped also the two free-standing rocks which had before defined the edges of the Abyss: the rocks on which the five of them were now standing.

The wooden bridge which linked the southern outcropping with the path leading to the Pillars snapped under the enormous pressure of the whirling water; but inside the gigantic funnel, it was completely peaceful. They were in the dead zone; in the still centre; in the eye of the cyclone.

Kain looked into the gaping hole below. The curtain had been raised; it was the time for the final act of the play to begin.

"Follow me," he bid the vampire.

-----

He leapt down, spreading out his wings to slow his descent; Shiva followed him. He was, Kain noticed, already becoming more proficient in flying; good, that–

So _this_ was the sight which had greeted Raziel after his execution and rebirth.

The tentacles and the eyes were _everywhere_.

Like a thick carpet, they covered the walls of the sinkhole of the Abyss: not in a single place could the rock underlay be seen. As they descended down the well, Kain watched Shiva's face change: and he wondered how his own face could have looked when he had first beheld this monster. He thought of Janos; of his words– _"The horror! The horror!"_

There was a bottom to the Abyss: a floor; also covered by tentacles and eyes, large and small. There were, to Kain's infinite surprise, traces of civilisation even here: carved steles, barely sticking out of the mass of writhing flesh. He settled on one of them, careful not to touch the green mass; Shiva perched on another. (The vampire's face, Kain noted, satisfied, had already lost its expression of awestruck horror; the former Guardian of Conflict was now scanning the surroundings with narrowed eyes, clearly deciding on the best way to attack.)

Kain looked up: far, far above him, there was a tiny dot which, he knew, must be the Nexus Stone. There was a tiny whirl of energy streaming out of it: Eirene must have started opening the portal. Now, it was up to him to do his part: he must weaken the creature as much as possible–

"Kain. So you, too, have come at last to look into the Abyss."

Ah. He had been waiting for _this_.

(He looked at Shiva: the vampire, though clearly astonished by the booming voice which seemed to come from all places at once and no place at all, definitely wasn't as utterly dumbstruck as before. Evidently, the novelty of the experience was already wearing off–)

"I have looked there long ago," he replied, without a moment's hesitation.

"And what have you found there, Scion of Balance?"

"A monster."

A moment passed in silence; and then, Kain laughed.

"Did you _truly_ think that I would deny myself even for a moment? I _know_ who I am: and we _both_ know that this will be no heroic battle. There is no place for righteous hypocrisy in this fight; we will fight not for ideals; not for truth, or vengeance, or freedom; but for _power_ and for the reign over souls."

"Ah. Tell me, Kain, do you intend to share the spoils of war with those on whose _goodwill_ and _competence_ you are even now _forced_ to rely?" The voice was dripping sarcasm. "Or will you destroy also _these_ tools when they become too independent – _too powerful_ – for you to control?"

The Elder One clearly believed that Kain would resent the implications of being forcedto rely on his retainers' skills. How odd. They were, in his estimate, rather adequate for the tasks he had assigned to them–

"I am _not_ the one who could not contain the tools he attempted to manipulate," he replied. "And, unlike you, false God, _I_ know that it behoves a leader to reward loyalty as much as punish betrayal; those that had _chosen_ to fight for me will receive their due. And so will _you_. I _promised_ you that–"

"I have forced you to _break_ your promise before, Kain," the Elder One nearly hissed out; the tentacles around Kain lashed at him angrily. He dodged them easily. "What makes you think I will not do it _again_? I _know_ your pathetic plan to depose me; I _heard_ it all–"

"Yes," Kain agreed dismissively, "I expect you would; you _are_ omnipresent, after all– However, what you _fail_ to realise is that your foreknowledge is simply inconsequential: you may know my _strategy_, but you will not escape your _fate_. Indeed," he laughed, "in a way, it is perhaps the _proper_ way for things to end: the time has come for _you_, demon, to finally taste the despair that comes with the awareness of the relentless – and inevitable."

For the first time, traces of fear and uncertainty entered the deep voice as the Elder One asked:

"Then you _do_ intend to pursue this foolishness to its conclusion?"

"I do."

"You _lie_. You will not deliver."

Now, Kain noticed with no small measure of satisfaction, the creature seemed to be alarmed; he finally managed to disturb its calm. Still, there was one more possibility: that this was yet another act–

"Tell me, demon," he taunted, "Are you afraid that I _will_ fulfil my word; or that I will _not_ do so?"

He was met only with silence; he smirked, and continued, "Or is it that you cannot simply make up your mind? That, even as you have lost the ability to predict the movements of your enemy, you have also lost the knowledge of your own intent? If so, my task here will be even _easier_. Know your enemy and know yourself: now, _I _know them _both_; while _you_ know _neither_."

The voice suddenly regained all its previous firmness. "It matters not. You will not survive this fight, Kain."

"Yes," the Scion of Balance agreed, "Enough banter. You have overstayed your welcome in Nosgoth, false God. Now, you will leave; and you will _not_ return."

And that, as they say, was _it_: and the Battle of the Abyss was begun.

-----

Creatures; creatures out of nightmares or a madman's delirium; misshapen creatures which seemed to be made of random limbs arbitrarily sewn together–

They appeared out of thin air around them, around him and Shiva; and Kain did not even have the time to wonder what they were; because already did he have to take to killing them. He cast the Dimension spell, and rapidly dispatched several of the beings with well-aimed cuts of the Reaver; then, he threw a series of fiery projectiles at a particularly large one, which had assaulted him with some sort of Death energy-draining attack–

Beside him, Shiva murmured several words even as he skewered one of the creatures on his Serioli sword; and the next moment, a host of shades appeared at Kain's side. These summoned creatures proceeded to tear at the foes; and Kain was free to deal with the _true_ enemy; their _true_ goal–

One by one, the tentacles fell to the Reaver; and for each one that fell, two or three immediately grew in the exact place; they lashed out at Kain, who did his best to protect himself; the spell of States, which made his skin as hard and durable as stone, proved invaluable in this case. Telekinetic projectiles cast by the Elder One's eyes crossed the air; some hit Kain's shield, some the shades, some the creature's own minions; so far, all had missed the unprotected vampire–

Kain cut off another tentacle, which immediately grew back–

(_–Good_, he thought: he really _was_ managing to draw the Elder One back from the rest of Nosgoth to this place–)

–and then, thrust the Reaver deep into one of the smaller eyes which, for the moment, was not protected; immediately withdrawing it, he spun around and cleanly beheaded one of the nightmare creatures which threatened to strike Shiva. The former Guardian of Conflict did not even notice this, so caught up was he in dodging a series of projectiles cast by one of the larger eyes; he flew up and down, left and right, in a wild, maniacal dance–

Kain cast his Time spell; the projectiles slowed down, even if the rate at which the eye fired them off did not; and so, the vampire, for whom time also slowed, could take advantage of a few moments of respite. In the meantime, Kain shot out an arc of Death lightning straight into the middle of the giant eye. He was rewarded with a yelp of pain, the first such during this fight; the eye was left charred and empty, and did not grow back.

He looked up: the tendril of energy issuing from the Nexus Stone was visibly larger; but it would be still a long, long fight.

Offhandedly, he cut off the thin, vine-like tentacle which tried to wrap around his ankle.

-----

They simply could not proceed further this way, Kain thought, dismayed: Shiva was already slowing down, and it would not be long before he started committing mistakes. And the plan to force the Elder One to spawn tentacles worked well, all _too_ well: he – _they_ – had to cut down their numbers, _fast_.

(–One of the nightmare creatures noticed his momentary distraction, and aimed another Death attack at him. Absent-mindedly, he electrocuted it with his own Death lightning, and then, for good measure, ran it through with the Reaver. It disappeared, as they all did; but immediately another spawned in its place. It really _was_ like fighting a thousand-headed hydra, he groaned. But that was, after all, the plan–)

Shiva summoned yet another host of shades to act as cannon fodder, all the while dodging the eyes' telekinetic bolts and sending off his own fire projectiles–

One of them hit, by pure chance, the stump of a tentacle which Kain cut off seconds before, and which did not yet grow back; the flesh hissed and sizzled as the wound cauterised. The tentacle did not grow back.

Kain and Shiva looked at each other; and from that point on, the battle plan changed.

-----

The tentacles were no longer a problem: they managed to keep their number more or less constant – Kain cut them off, while Shiva cauterised the stumps. The vampire's attempts did not always work: he had to time his strikes perfectly, as the Elder One was immune to the Time spell, and so, they could not take advantage of the slowed time–

No, the tentacles were no longer a problem.

That left only the summoned creatures and the eyes.

-----

Kain flew up a bit, and took a quick look at the battleground. It was oddly... clean: both the severed tentacles, the creatures summoned by the Elder One and the shades summoned by Shiva simply disappeared when they were destroyed: and so, the whole place was virtually unchanged.

(Except, of course, for the sky above. The tendril of energy issuing from the Nexus Stone had become a rather large swirl–)

Several steps away from him, Shiva was defending himself from yet another of the Death creatures. He was already tired, Kain noticed–

"Back off!" he ordered the vampire, "Find cover!"

Then, he concentrated: and less than a few seconds later, the whole clearing was filled with the deadly white-blue light of lightning bolts–

They struck everywhere, hitting indiscriminately the summoned creatures, the giant eyes and the tentacles and feelers, leaving behind only charred flesh and the smell of cooked meat. Arcs of lightning leapt from tentacle to tentacle, from giant eye to giant eye, from one summoned creature to another; wreaking havoc on them all.

When the storm ceased, Kain hovered in the air, temporarily drained of his power; but already one of the surviving creatures was floating towards him. He dashed to meet it, and, before it had the time to understand what was happening, he neatly cleaved it in two–

Shiva emerged from the niche where he hid during the storm, clearly intent on rejoining the combat; but at that moment, one of the Elder One's telekinetic projectiles which he had previously so nimbly avoided finally hit him. Dazed by the impact, he first staggered, and then looked around with a wild expression in his eyes, until he met Kain's gaze–

"Leave," Kain ordered, "_Now_."

Shiva followed the command, and teleported out, disappearing in a flash of magic–

Kain concentrated, and called the lightning again.

-----

The Elder One's attacks were slowly weakening; at one point, after – Kain could not tell after _which_ lightning storm; he simply lost count–

After one of the lightning storms, the summoned creatures simply ceased to appear; the Elder One must have decided that he had to spend too much energy animating them.

Many of his eyes and tentacles had been destroyed as well; only empty sockets and charred stumps were left behind–

But equally many were still very much alive; and these, Kain systematically destroyed even as they regenerated. With the situation under control, he very rarely resorted to Death magic: his aim, he kept reminding himself, was _not_ to destroy his enemy, but to force him into this perpetual regeneration; to drain him maximally of his powers–

On the other hand, he must not let the Elder One have a moment to consider what was happening, he suddenly thought; and he summoned yet another lightning storm.

-----

And then, suddenly, he _felt_ it: the Gate was about to open–

-----

a whirlwind of energy

(_blink_)

amorphousness:

an inside without an outside;

a lining without a crust;

a parasite without its host;

a faint echo of an anguished cry: "_No_!"

(_blink_)

a nothing

-----

Kain had already teleported out of the sinkhole by the time the Gate opened and closed; he was hovering mid-air directly under the Nexus Stone. He tried to catch the Stone as it fell, suddenly released from Eirene's telekinetic hold; but it slid out of his grasp, and plummeted down–

The parted waters of the Abyss suddenly unravelled, reverting to their normal flow; by the time the Stone reached the level of water, the water was already there. And perhaps this was for the better, Kain thought: perhaps the Stone would be pulverised in the maelstrom–

He turned around, and flew the short distance to the rock which Zosha and Perun had occupied during the confrontation. Shiva must also be there: there were three shapes on the rock.

He settled down, and looked around–

Zosha was on her knees, clutching her face, quietly whimpering; something was flowing out from between her fingers: tears of a mixture of a gelatinous humour and blood. Next to her, Perun lay seized with a fit of convulsions: his body was shaking rapidly, and equally rapidly shifted its state between a more solid and a more fluid one; white froth issued from his mouth–

At that moment, Eirene appeared on their side of the Abyss. She now approached Kain slowly, step after step, leaving a trail of blood and scales after her: a pattern of red blood droplets was scattered all across her skin. Her eyes had flowed out, too: in their places there were only empty sockets.

A few steps away from him, she tripped, wavered, and finally, slowly slid down to her knees. She did not come up.

Kain spun around–

Shiva was looking at him with unseeing, unrecognising eyes. His left wing, the one hit directly by the Elder One's projectile, was crooked – no, in fact, completely limp and lifeless; and his left hand was clutching tightly the blade of his sword. Already had the sharp steel begun to cut through the soft flesh, and blood spurted freely; yet Shiva seemed to be oblivious to the pain.

They had all played with powers which they should not have touched; had overstrained their mortal minds and bodies; or, in Shiva's case, had defied that whose mere touch had been fatal to a mortal–

There _had_ been a reason why only the immortal Scion of Balance could have hoped to defeat the Elder One; why it had taken Hash'ak'Gik a century to open a Gate; why no one had attempted to raise the waters of the Abyss single-handedly before–

He had much luck in that they lasted as long as he had need of them.

-----

He knew he could heal them – each and every one of them. It would be undemanding: all it would take, he knew, would be an effort of his will. He would have to _want_ it: simply that, and as much as that.

(Why hadn't it occurred to him to do this with _Janos_? He tried to recall: those had been several very confusing moments–)

In the end, he decided to do it.

-----

He turned away from them: he had no morbid fascination for the process of healing at this particular time. Instead, he turned to the Abyss; and for a quiet moment, there was only the whirlpool, the Reaver and he.

Then, there were some sounds behind him; but he paid them no heed; and his peace was not interrupted, either–

When he finally turned round, he saw that the four of them were already afoot. They were all completely healed; four pairs of eyes were looking at him in silent apprehension.

It was Shiva who spoke out first, expressing the sentiments of all.

"Et maintenant," he asked, "que ferons-nous? Où irons-nous?"

(_And now, what will we do? Where will we go?_)

"To the Pillars," Kain replied. "I must complete the Binding."


	17. The Binding

**Chapter 16**

**The Binding**

They teleported, all five of them, in unison to the Pillars; and Kain noticed, with some slight dose of amusement infused with a rather large dose of pride, that each of his four lieutenants seemed to have instinctively chosen the proper spot where he or she should appear. It was as if, in a way, the Pillars called to them as well, to their individual powers and abilities; although this was, obviously, an utterly absurd idea.

And so, as he was standing under the Pillar of Balance, in the place where his throne had once been, he had to his immediate right Shiva, the former Guardian of Conflict, standing between the Pillar he had once protected, and the Pillar of Nature. Further to the right, between the Pillars of Dimension and Mind, stood Zosha, the last descendant of the long line of the witch Priestesses of the Citadel. All of them had been strong in Mind magic; she was the first to master Dimension as well.

To his left, in front of the Pillars of Time and Energy, stood Eirene, the Seer and daughter to the greatest Seer of them all; or, perhaps, in point of fact, she was just _as_ great as her mother had once been; she had known well enough to exchange the certainty of prophesising in a world devoid of free will for the uneasy task of doing so in an ever-changing time-stream.

Finally, far to the left, was Eirene's half-brother Perun; like her, the offspring of his old enemy; now, like her, converted to Kain's side. He was standing between States and Death, watching the Scion of Balance carefully.

All accepted mostly for lack of better options – faute de mieux, as Shiva would probably say, they have all proven themselves in the battle over the Abyss, if not even before. They were now, save him, the four most powerful beings in Nosgoth.

And Nosgoth would need them, when he was gone.

---

He pulled out the Soul Reaver. The Reaver–

---

He had perhaps first understood what, in the end, would be demanded of him, when he had heard from Shiva and Perun that the Binding had never been completed in the first place; that this had been the reason why it had failed, why the Hylden had escaped; and that he was the one supposed to complete it.

It had been then that he had first understood that it would not be enough to banish the Elder One to Avici; that, like the Hylden, banished, the demon, the fraud, the _parasite_, would be able to return even from that place if the Binding were not completed.

And there was only one way to complete it, was there not? There was a reason why the Reaver was required. Only one reason why the – he laughed at the metaphor – the key to the lock of the Pillars – had the shape and the form of a sword.

So, the vampires had created the blade, with the small help of Vorador, who had forged it, and Maat, who had cast the soul-binding spell. They had believed, because they had been told so by their Oracle, that they were creating a weapon for their hero, who was to defeat the Hylden champion. Maat, of course, believed that the heroes were reversed. (He wondered for a moment if her visions had been true or if she had simply succumbed to untruths sent to her by the Elder One in a moment of weakness.)

Then, the Pillars had been raised; and then, the vampires had discovered that they could not complete the Binding. Why?

Because of the Death Pillar, the instinct's inner voice told him. The Death Pillar must have been created to prevent precisely the type of manipulations which the Hylden had used to create the curse which they had cast on the vampires: the search for immortality. Its work would ensure that all of Nosgoth would be subject to the Wheel.

But in the precious period between the Pillars had been raised and had finished weaving their spell, the Hylden curse had wormed its way into the hearts and bodies of their creators and masters; and their Guardians. And so, the vampires' very immortality had interfered with the Death Pillar's function; had introduced an imbalance, the first of many to come, between the Nine.

It must have been that imbalance that the first Guardian of Balance had felt, and ordered that the Binding not be finished; or possibly, he or she had felt it _because_ it had not been possible to conclude it. And so, he (or, again, _she_) had decided on a radical solution: to put all of Nosgoth's powers, all of the Pillars' powers into the hands of one creature. The Scion of Balance.

Kain felt a sudden twinge of sympathy for that anonymous Guardian who, upon searching the time stream for a solution of the conundrum, had discovered that the things that had been considered prophetic revelations had been little else but lies; that there had been another reading of the prophecies. And that the Reaver had been created, in the first place, to destroy the Scion; because the Scion had been the only one whom the Elder One had ever feared.

The Guardian's plan had been desperate, indeed: after all, its success depended entirely on that singular chance, the chance that was no greater than that of a coin's falling on its edge: the chance that Raziel would refuse to kill Kain in the tomb of William the Just–

_Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem_... How had Eirene put it–? In despair lies the one hope of the damned–? The Guardian had been desperate, and had embarked on a desperate plan. He or she had still managed to create the warnings in the Spirit Forge, but, in the end, Balance had been the first Guardian to perish.

---

And now, now that the Guardian's plan had born fruit, and all nine Pillars were, perhaps for the very first time in history – not even for the first time since the Sarafan had put Janos into coma: for the first time in _history_ – functioning properly, it was the time to complete the Binding. And to do that, he would need to release the powers the Pillars were continuously transferring into _him_, the powers with which they sustained his, Kain's, existence. The powers which had never been given and taken; only lent and borrowed; and now, it was the time for them to be returned.

Even when rebelling against the Elder One, the Guardian had apparently still thought like a vampire, like his faithful worshipper: because, in return for a job well performed, Kain's reward was to be death.

(What a typically vampiric suicidal idealism.)

---

He looked at his lieutenants. They seemed to be finally understanding what was about to happen; what he was about to do. The human, in some sudden bout of masochism, seemed to be on the brink of tears for the one who had mutilated her and killed her brother; who had repeatedly rejected her offer of alliance at a time when she had been the only one potentially sympathetic soul in Nosgoth; for the one who had saved her only when he had to prove to a newly acquired follower that he had not been an utterly worthless leader.

The simpleton of a vampire had left his sword, and was now holding the human, possibly to restrain her from doing something foolish; across the platform, Perun was eyeing Kain with complete and utter disbelief, and more than a little alarm–

Eirene's reaction was perhaps the most expected: she was completely calm and in control of herself, elegant and inscrutable, as if she had already Seen and lived through this moment. And perhaps she had: after all, there had been Seers even before all the time streams had become one. She might already be planning how to use his death to ascend into power–

At that moment, she looked straight at him, inquisitively, as if she were attempting to Whisper something into his thoughts; but they were not in Avici, and she could not find him here if he did not wish it; and he did not.

Her expression changed into one of slight amusement, as though she finally understood something, some private joke; and then, she smiled widely; she looked absolutely beautiful.

---

The Pillar of Death was working. Save Kain himself, never again would there be an immortal in Nosgoth; not unless some future Guardian of Death decided to risk Balance again. (If, that is, there would be Guardians at all.)

And so, they would all die; all four of them; and their descendants, and the descendants of their descendants, and so on, ad infinitum. If he decided to stay, the longest time he could expect an acquaintance, any acquaintance, to last would be – several centuries, perhaps, if even _that_ long. Once, perhaps, that would have sufficed him: a new set of faces every several centuries–

And so, he would last in his lonely vigil, until the inevitable happened, and the passage between realms opened again, and the Elder One returned from Avici; or – something which for some reason, seemed to him much more probable at this point – the power he carried within his body consumed him.

He could feel it even now; he had felt it even the very moment he had acquired the last of it: he could not contain the power; could not control it; one body simply could not contain the power of a whole realm for long. Even _his_ body: he must be honest at least with himself in this regard, if with none other; hypocrisy had always been the one vice he had abhorred. (Perhaps, he smiled, the only vice.)

Every last of his enemies was dead; dead or – he looked at Perun – on his side. It would not take long before the power he contained would turn on his allies; and, then, at last, on himself. He would contain it, for a time, of course; but would he even be aware when he ceased to contain it?

---

He was angry, of course.

It angered him that the vampires' ancient sins, their ancient gullibility and foolishness, were even now taking their toll; and that he, of all, was their victim.

It angered him that he would never witness what the restoration of the Pillar of Nature would do for Nosgoth's completely destroyed environment. If, perhaps, the knowledge preserved in the human gardens, the vampire knowledge of Nature magic, and the Hylden technologies would manage to bring back predators to Nosgoth; so that the nights would again resound with their hunting calls, and the death cries of their prey.

It angered him that he was doing precisely the thing of which Janos had accused him: empowering the ignorant and the undeserving. Because they _were_ undeserving, the peoples of Nosgoth: they had not deserved Raziel's sacrifice, and they certainly did not deserve _his_.

It angered him that had never even _heard_ of Raziel.

It angered him that Nosgoth would be saved, but not for him. Never for him.

It angered him that here, at the very end, he was still confronted with the same choice he had to make when he had been a fledgling.

---

What could he tell them at a time like this?

---

"_Remember_."

Remember – the enemy against whom we had fought? (Yes. Everything must be known this time; no things must be declared unspoken.) That curious moment of camaraderie when we had all rested after the fight? (Yes. How much longer, he wondered, would the curious armistice survive without his supreme rule of all?) Raziel? (But they have never known of him; even _they_ – a spike of wrath crossed his mind – had never known of him.)

Remember – _me_?

They had better.

---

There was a brief shriek as the Reaver took a soul.

---

From the outside, the display must have been impressive enough, he supposed from the look of pure awe on their faces. But from the inside–

From the inside–

From the inside, it felt as if he were swimming in the streams of time; as if he were again reliving that instant when he had pulled the Reaver from Raziel and thus changed history, back in the Sarafan Keep. Histories shuffled past at a breakneck speed; pieces of puzzle clicked into place as the Pillars set a barrier across space and time; a barrier between the Nosgoth that have been and the Nosgoth that would be–

And then, all grew still, all at once; and all that remained was a Reaver-shaped hole–

Suddenly, he found himself in a dim, torch-lit chamber. Before he had a chance to even wonder where he was, he saw two figures, two faces; and he instantly understood.

He laughed; he wondered if the last conscious sight of his existence would be that of Moebius' surprised face, as the young boy-king William the Just took the Soul Reaver out of his unresisting hands–

It would not be the worst, he decided; and _then_–


	18. The Final Egress

**Epilogue**

**The Final Egress**

–and _then_, the world _shifted_ around him, and he found himself in an unfamiliar place, an unfamiliar, alien landscape, painted in tones of blue and green; laments and moans filled the air, if, indeed, there _was_ an air here; odd, malformed creatures wandered on the floor in some distance–

"At last you have awakened! I was wondering how much longer it would take you," he heard someone speak above his head; following the sound of the voice, he looked up–

A whirling mass of white, seething, agitated water completely filled his field of vision–

_I must be at the bottom of the Abyss again_, he thought; but why couldn't he hear anything? The water ought to make a deafening noise. For that matter, why didn't he _feel_ that he were in water?

He looked around again: yes, these were the same carved steles he had noticed during the fight– but they looked different, skewed somehow–

"What _is_ this place?" he growled out, annoyed.

"The Spectral Underworld," his as of yet unseen interlocutor replied matter-of-factly, "The abode of the dead; and, until some time ago, the self-proclaimed Hub of the Wheel of Fate."

"I– see." That was all he could think of, at the moment.

"Yes." A shape leapt down from the highest stele into a crouch; then, it drew itself up. "Wings become you, Kain."

"_Raziel_," he said carefully, in as neutral a tone as he could muster; and then, he asked the one question that he knew must be asked, "How did you escape the Reaver?"

Raziel shrugged. "Strange things happen at the threshold of aeons, Kain," he said nonchalantly, "The sword had been shattered long ago. The Reaver was not needed anymore."

"_Not _needed_ anymore?_" Kain said calmly; he was far beyond heated wrath, and had long ascended into ice-cold fury. "Do you not _realise_, Raziel, what you have done? In this one move, this one masterful stroke of pure egoism, you have introduced a massive paradox, unravelled the entire stream of Nosgoth's history, and undone all our efforts – all _my_ efforts – to set things on their correct path. How _dared_ you– how _dared_ you _interfere_–" His voice suddenly broke. His hand automatically went to his back for the Reaver; but, of course, the sword was not there.

Raziel only watched him calmly.

Kain mentally replayed his speech, and groaned. He had a sudden sense of déjá vu; except that, for some reason, his and Raziel's roles were reversed–

"I have left in the sword," Raziel started to speak quietly, but his voice grew stronger and louder with every word, "the centuries of torment I had suffered in the Abyss, and the five centuries which I had spent cowardly trying to escape my fate. It turned out to be enough to satisfy the spell which imprisoned me; is it not enough for _you_, Kain? Is nothing _ever_ enough for you?"

"Or is it that," Raziel's voice suddenly took on a very different quality, "you still cannot make yourself believe, even now, at the end of all time; now that you have surmounted the insurmountable, and defeated the invincible – that, for once, Fate may be on _our_ side; that, at last, you may have reached a place of serenity? The game is _over_, Kain. And _you_ have _won_."

For a moment, they watched each other in silence.

Kain was the first to break it. "So, I have _won_," he said, "And _this_, I suppose, is to be my _prize_?" He gestured to the desolate, blue-green landscape.

Raziel raised an eyebrow. "Yes," he said, "Although this is just the middle ground."

"_The_ _middle ground_? What is further on?"

"This," Raziel wavered for a moment, as though he could not quite translate his thoughts into words, "depends."

Kain only looked at him. He was slowly getting annoyed again, this time at his son's inability to express himself.

"You see, there are three possible avenues to pursue," Raziel said at last. "The first is to be reborn–"

Kain started. "_Reborn_? I have destroyed the Wheel."

Raziel looked at him, mildly surprised. "_Destroyed_? The _Wheel_? No. You have only destroyed the _parasite_ that fed on the Wheel; and that is a world of a difference. Look there–"

Kain looked to where Raziel was pointing. There was nothing there, except for a few of those miserable, misshapen creatures–

"These are the sluagh. In a sense, _they_ are the Wheel. You see, when a soul arrives in the Underworld, it resides here, meandering, until it can find its way to a new body. The sluagh speed up the whole process: in exchange for a small part of the soul's essence, they direct the soul–"

"And so, the soul enters the new body, but this time slightly more... aware of what it had been; what it was; and what it was to be; and with each subsequent life, this knowledge, this awareness, accumulates more and more–"

"And the parasite, I take it, devoured it _all_?" Kain asked, intrigued against his own volition.

"Yes. Each life started as a clean, blank slate, each subsequent time, every next turn of the Wheel," Raziel shuddered. "Except _mine_. He _needed_ me."

For a moment, he was silent; then, as Kain was about to urge him on, he returned to his explanation.

"We could _allow_ the sluagh to devour the _most_ of us; all, perhaps. And so, we would return to Nosgoth as entirely different people. Perhaps," he mused, "from time to time, we would have dreams of our previous lives; or not even that."

"The second option," he continued, met with nothing but silence on Kain's part, "is to return as devourers of souls. I could teach you how to use your mind to animate matter. Of course, as we are not material creatures anymore, we would constantly need to replenish our forces with other people's spiritual energy. You would find it," a grimace twisted his face, "not too unlike being a vampire – a _cursed_ vampire, that is." He looked straight into Kain's eyes, with an amused expression. "Less dirty, perhaps."

Kain considered for a moment. "This means that I – _we_ – could reign–"

"_Forever_."

Kain laughed, entertaining the thought, "Forever and ever; in all the eternal glory of the omnipotent King that once was and was now returned; and of his son, the Messiah of Nosgoth–"

"Yes," Raziel laughed as well, sharing in the joke, "And do we not deserve this? It will be even more plausible because we will probably surface in Nosgoth centuries after you have last been seen–"

Kain's utter lack of comprehension must have reflected on his face, because Raziel hurried with an explanation–

"Time flows differently in the Underworld; it is really impossible to determine how much time has passed in the material world until you leave it. An instant can last a millennium; a century can pass in a moment–"

"I– see," Kain said. "You still have not mentioned the third option," he added, after a moment of silence.

Raziel smiled. "Turn around, Kain."

He did so–

It looked like a gate – a portal–

Except that these were, of course, completely the wrong words to describe it.

"What _is_ that thing?" he asked, awed and incredulous.

"I don't know," Raziel admitted. "I think that no one knows. I _think_ that this is what the parasite had been concealing for millennia. The final egress: visible only to those who already _know_ who they are. But to what Heaven or Hell it leads–" He did not finish, and only shrugged.

There was another moment of silence. Then, Raziel suddenly broke it again.

"Kain," he said, "You know that I will follow you wherever you go. Whatever you choose."

Kain looked at his firstborn; two pairs of yellow eyes met.

"I know, Raziel," he replied, "I _know_."

He made his choice.


	19. A New Beginning

**Epilogue**

**A New Beginning**

_Les célébrations du vingtième anniversaire de la Bataille de l'Abîme sont finies. Nous sommes tous partis pour nos maisons. Tous d'entre nous sont secrètement satisfaits que nous pouvons finalement arrêter de le feindre _

"Shiva?"

Shiva, Regent of Fire, Lord Protector of Nosgoth, turned away from the desk where he was writing his memoirs to face the newcomer.

She was standing in the middle of the chamber, in the very same pose in which she had been standing when he had first seen her–

In fact, the _whole_ of her looked exactly like that first time: she did not have one wrinkle, one sign of aging on her face. The human regenerative powers took care of them. He recalled, with some amusement, that some humans had referred to it as 'vampiric regeneration' in the beginning. How he sometimes wished that it were still true!

The only mark on her skin was that which remained after the wound she had sustained before she had been Changed: the three deep gashes on her right cheek, incurred by Kain's talons. The more religiously-minded among the people of all three races of Nosgoth had treated the disfigurement with the reverence of a holy relic, saying that it was a visible sign of Kain's lasting legacy, the sign he had left behind before departing Nosgoth; copycat mutilations were common in certain circles. Zosha had always laughed off such theories, saying that if the people wanted a visible sign, they should look no further than to the Pillars and to their own bloods.

Over time, the human and he had become allies, friends, then, eventually, lovers; then, by mutual agreement, they had stopped being lovers–

(She had wanted the family and the children whom, obviously, he could never give her; and they had decided that getting involved in some vulgar triangle would be simply beneath them, and unfair on the man who would become her husband. He was a good person. Shiva liked him.)

–but they continued to be friends and allies. And now–

"Perun's armies have moved," she said suddenly, breaking the silence.

"Perun's?" They had always assumed that it would be Eirene who would strike first–

"Yes. You know what we must do. We must find the Guardians."

"We have always assumed that the Pillars would call to them. They always did, in the end," he replied, thinking back to that time, millennia ago, in his previous life, when he had been a human child–

"Twenty years have passed, Shiva! The Guardians should be adult by now – but still they haven't shown up! Not even during the celebrations–"

"I know that as well as you do, Zosha!" They had both had certain expectations regarding the celebrations. In fact, the hope that the Pillar Guardians would choose that moment to present themselves was a major factor why the two agreed to the spectacle of showing the peoples of Nosgoth that the four Regents presented a uniform front – at a time when even the unhatched Hylden knew that two of them were on the brink of war–

He stood up and walked up briskly the few steps which divided him from Zosha; and then, hugged her tightly until he felt her tense muscles relax. Much calmer now, the Regent of Air, the Lady Protectress of Nosgoth, and, the most important of all, his beloved, looked up to him and asked inquisitively, "Can we be sure that–"

"The Pillars will call the Guardians at all? We cannot. I remember nothing from my training that spoke of what would happen after the conclusion of the Binding. We all treated it as something half-mythical anyway..."

"Were it that they had never included Conflict among the Nine!" he suddenly exclaimed. "Perhaps Nosgoth would have found some peace at last–"

"Yes," Zosha agreed; now, it seemed, it was her turn to calm him. "On the other hand, you wouldn't have been here now, Shiva. But you are, and so is the Pillar of Conflict; and it befalls us, you and me, to find its Guardian; and the other Guardians. We have ruled for twenty years in peace; we must do all we can to preserve it before Eirene and Perun tear each other and the land into pieces again."

He nodded; she was correct, of course. "So, where do we begin?"


	20. Appendix: Afterword

**Appendix I**

**Afterword**

So, the Elder God is defeated, the Pillars and Balance are restored to Nosgoth, the Binding is complete, and even Raziel is out of the sword... My work is done, and I can go move on to that Draco Malfoy/Moaning Myrtle story I've been blatantly neglecting for the past nine months. :D

But before that, I will blatantly violate the policy of this site and devote a whole chapter to acknowledging my sources.

(If you don't want to read this all... Well, there is a bit of a Bonus Feature in the next chapter. Hope you enjoy it!)

---

So, first of all, I owe the game scripts and the occasional bits of game trivia to The Dark Chronicle and Nosgothic Realm; and the locations and concepts cut from the games to The Lost Worlds. The "What do the fans want in LoK6?" thread on the Eidos Forums has been a great source of inspiration. Finally, Reverso is the on-line translator I used for the several French quotes.

---

Literary inspirations and quotes: _Heart of Darkness_ was inspired by – well, by Joseph Conrad's _Heart of Darkness_. In fact, I'm very sorry to admit this, the most important scene of the chapter has been directly lifted from the novella – well, after some rewriting to make it fit Nosgoth instead of Congo. (If you're feeling charitable, you may say that it was _adapted _instead of _plagiarised_, but that's entirely up to you.)

The wolf smell-vision comes from Mr. Pratchett, of course. :D In particular, what I had in mind was something like in the _Discworld Noir_ game.

Avici comes from the Ksitigarbha / Lotus Sutra.

Parts of the Elder God battle plan come from the Greek mythology, from Heracles' fight against the Hydra.

_Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem _comes from Virgil's _Aeneid_; "Better reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n," from Milton's _Paradise Lost_; "The one who hunts monsters must beware lest he himself become a monster; for as you gaze into the Abyss, it also looks into thee," from Nietzsche's _Beyond Good and Evil_; "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds," from the _Bhavad Gita_, "Know your enemy and know yourself," from Sun Tzu, or whatever the proper transcription of his name now is.

---

OK. Part three of the acknowledgments is for all my reviewers. In short: thanks:D

Special thanks, _again_, to **Shadowjewel** for making me let Perun survive and making me rethink the role of the Seer and the first Guardian of Balance; for general beta work and advice; and to **Balance Reaver** for continued support in really difficult times.

---

And, finally, there are the greatest thanks of all – to Amy Hennig and the other folks at Crystal Dynamics, those who actually _created_ the games. I hope that if they ever learn that I've played a bit in their sandbox, they won't mind it very much.

(Especially not enough to sue me. I did put the disclaimer at the beginning, didn't I? Yes, I did.)

Ergh. _No_ thanks to: Eidos, which finally relegated Legacy of Kain to the Classics section of their Forums; and, especially, all the people who copied the games instead of buying them properly, because this forced Eidos to take the economically sound decision not to produce the sixth game, which means that the _proper_ story will never be told.

We'll be seeing each other around.


	21. Appendix: The Races of Nosgoth

**Appendix II**

**The Races of Nosgoth**

The Change affected each of the three races of Nosgoth differently. The following paragraphs describe each of the three races as they now are.

**Vampires:**

All vampires have blue skin, yellow eyes, black hair and massive wings with black feathers. They have very quick reflexes and night sight. The Change purged them of their bloodlust and immortality; it also endowed on them the immunity to water.

About a thousand vampires now live in Nosgoth. The majority inhabit the ruins of their old capital, which they are slowly restoring to its former glory. Some live in the human Citadel, Avernus and Perun's Enclave; given the proximity of the Citadel and the vampire city (which, at present, remains nameless, as the vampires cannot agree on one name), most frequently visit the human city.

Vampires are naturally affined with Fire and, to lesser extent, Air magic. They are capable of the Whisper and teleportation; some, of fire telekinesis. Their insight into the Nature magic gives them a unique role in the Regents' efforts to restore Nosgoth's devastated ecosystems: vampire wardens foster the growth of plants in the experimental areas.

The greatest weakness of the vampires is their complete vulnerability to Glyph energy. Only the most powerful vampires can overcome it.

**Humans:**

The Change affected the humans profoundly. Alone of the three races, they can now regenerate from the majority of wounds; they never show signs of aging after they reach adult age.

Humans cannot fly, but their affinity with Air magic means that they can easily teleport to any place they have already seen. It also means that they are almost uniformly capable of the Whisper. The sorcerers among them (about 1/3 of the populace) are capable of telekinesis and assorted arts. Humans are not susceptible to Glyph energy.

Some select humans are proficient in Water magic in addition to Air magic. They are very few, and, by and large, carefully watched by Zosha's government, if not employed in it directly. The reason is clear: they are either adept shape-shifters or capable of necromancy. Fortunately, as of now, there hasn't been a recorded case of one person combining these two abilities.

About 3000 humans survive in Nosgoth, the majority of them in their Citadel, the Ash Village or the newly-founded colony in the former Razielim abode. Some act as envoys, either to the vampires or to the Hylden; many others prefer to satisfy their curiosity regarding the other races with frequent trips to Avernus or to the vampire settlement.

The humans are crucial to the effort to restore Nosgoth's natural environment: their gardens preserved living samples of certain species, and their Mouseion, dead samples of others.

**Hylden:**

Some 10 000 Hylden survived the Banishment and the return to Nosgoth. They are now divided into two groups. The majority of the Hylden followed their rightful Queen and settled on the plains east of Avernus, in the shade of Kain's Tower. About five hundred, however, decided to follow Perun, the last survivor of their Avici leaders. These all but disappeared from the face of Nosgoth, hiding in a place known only as the Enclave. No one knows where the Enclave is located; it is said that if one has a reason to find it, one does.

Of the two leaders, Perun is the more open-minded. The Enclave is, by all accounts, an egalitarian meritocracy: indeed, many humans and vampires live there as citizens. In the end, though, they always return home; because the kind of person who finds their way to the Enclave is usually the kind of person who knows that there is much work yet to be done in the two Citadels.

Some of the humans talented in Water magic live here as well. They are usually sent here by Zosha, so that they could understand and learn to harness their powers without harming their compatriots.

The Hylden are tall, slim and graceful, possessed of membranous wings. Their skin is covered with scales: their colours range from silver to green. They have green, vertically-slit eyes. They are affined with Earth magic; a select few are affined with Water. They are, thus, proficient in telekinesis and the use of Glyph energy. A few among them can manipulate time to a small extent, slowing it or hastening it for their personal use. It is said that their Queen is actually a Seer, and has a limited ability to see the future; but it is unknown how widespread this particular gift can be. If the Hylden themselves be believed, only the Queen and her children will ever possess it.

Their longed banishment to Avici had an acute effect on the Hylden, and the Change rectified this matter only in part. The Hylden are almost blind at night, and they cannot survive long in low temperatures: that is why they illuminate their settlements brightly, and why, whenever they visit either of the two Citadels, they tend to dress warmly. _Very_ warmly. In fact, research is now under way to discover new textiles which would solve this very problem.

Very few of the Hylden have any affinity with Air or Fire magic. Therefore, few can teleport or Whisper. Their almost complete ignorance of Nature magic is, however, cancelled out by their technological supremacy: forced to survive in the hostile landscape of Avici, they developed a plethora of biotechnological techniques which they now use, to good effect, to bring back the extinct species of Nosgoth.

There are rumours that the technocrats of the Enclave are now working on creating a half-vampire, half-human hybrid. Few, if any, believe them: what would be the purpose of such research?

- taken from the _Nosgoth: the RPG _Sourcebook


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